Hartford — A puzzling financial oversight has left a gap in the municipal budget, town officials have learned.

Hartford’s municipal Town Hall, which was the subject of a major $4.2 million renovation project completed last summer, typically is cleaned twice weekly by a contractor who provides janitorial services.

The contract is for about $30,000 each year, but interim Town Manager Pat MacQueen told the Selectboard during an April 26 meeting that the fiscal year 2016 budget did not fully fund that line item, for reasons unknown.

“The finance director and I have been scratching our heads over the janitorial budget for Town Hall,” MacQueen told the Selectboard. “This year’s budget includes about $14,700, which is about half of what was budgeted last year, and what was budgeted for next year.”

MacQueen told the Selectboard the cleaning service would be paid with money from other line items.

“We’ll just have to find a way that makes that work,” he said.

The budget in question was drafted in 2014 by then-Town Manager Hunter Rieseberg, who abruptly resigned from his job in August.

During a Jan. 6, 2015, budget workshop, the Selectboard reviewed Rieseberg’s recommendation to reduce that particular line item in the budget to $14,700 from $38,666, according to video from CATV.

Rieseberg brought up the idea that maintenance and utility costs in the newly renovated Town Hall were an unknown quantity.

“It’s a little bit of a crapshoot here because we really don’t know what our new building will do,” Rieseberg said, referring specifically to the costs of heating and lighting the building.

Then-Selectman Chuck Wooster questioned the reduction.

“It looks like the big savings there is from reduced cleaning?” Wooster asked.

“Yes,” Rieseberg said.

“That seems like it’s …,” Wooster trailed off in a manner that suggested he would like more of an explanation.

“That’s going to be ‘wait and see,’ too,” Rieseberg said. “I don’t think we need the same level of cleaning that we’ve had in the past.”

Another member of the Selectboard asked a question on a different topic, and there was no further discussion about the reduction before the Selectboard voted unanimously in favor of that spending category.

For the upcoming fiscal 2017 budget, which was approved by voters in March and will take effect in July, funding was brought back up to $32,200.

In an email to the Valley News, MacQueen, who himself only works two days each week, said the situation was unchanged.

“The fix will likely be that it has to be made up elsewhere in the budget,” he wrote.

Matt Hongoltz-Hetling can be reached at mhonghet@vnews.com or 603-727-3211.