State transportation officials will likely decide this spring whether or not to move forward with the costly Green Line Extension project.

MBTA General Manager Frank DePaola told the T's fiscal control board during a meeting on Monday that the agency plans to have a scaled-down project design and a new budget estimate ready by April 7.

DePaola said the agency would then create a new finance plan by May 6, with a discussion on next steps expected at the May 11 joint meeting of the T's control board and the board of the state's Department of Transportation.

The future of the project, which would take the Green Line into Somerville and Medford, has been in question ever since officials revealed that its projected cost had ballooned by about $1 billion.

In December, the T cancelled all contracts associated with the project and said it was restructuring the team overseeing it.

A new interim team was announced Monday, and includes interim project manager Jack Wright, with the firm Weston & Sampson. DePaola told reporters after the meeting that Wright worked for the T for 10 years as a design and construction project manager, before being transferred to work on the Big Dig. He said Wright had the "big project experience" needed to manage the Green Line Extension.

"We have several moving parts here we have to deal with — design, budgeting, scheduling and ongoing construction," DePaola said. "So we needed someone who had that requisite experience who start essentially today."

The new team will oversee the continuing construction and work to get the extension to a place where it could move forward.

DePaola said the team was working on a short term basis, about five to six months, as the T looks to hire a permanent team. He said contracts for the cost of their work had not been finalized.

Here are more highlights from Monday’s meeting:

A Bit Of Good Budget News

Chief Administrator Brian Shortsleeve told the board on Monday that a slowdown in the growth of operating expenses and an increase in revenue means the T’s structural deficit for the first five months of fiscal year 2016 (July 2015 to November 2015) was $53 million less than projected.

(The T had projected a $170 million budget deficit for this fiscal year, which is being paid for by the state through a one-time discretionary allocation in the state budget.)

Shortsleeve called the better budget numbers a "positive trend," but cautioned that the agency is still facing "a very significant headwind" as it looks to close a projected $242 million budget shortfall for next fiscal year.

"I want to be very cautious about this, because five months doesn't make a year ... and we have winter ahead of us," Shortsleeve said.