On Jan. 30, after months of discussion, the Belmont Select Board will decide the size of a Proposition 2½ override to present to town residents.
The question remains: how much will voters support raising their taxes to maintain town and school services, and what will happen if they don’t?
According to Select Board Chair Roy Epstein, rounds of discussions have boiled down to three scenarios: No override at all, an override to provide existing services but nothing further, and a higher number providing funds to address school curriculum and special education issues and allow for sidewalk work on the town side.
Voters will have the last word on April 2 in the town’s local election.
Belmont faces a $6.5 million gap in the next fiscal year, which will continue to grow over the next two years as anticipated expenses outpace expected revenue. Epstein said a proposed override would last three to six years before more intervention is needed.
“I think a belief that we can get by with no override is just wishful thinking, to put it mildly,” Epstein said. “I think, at a minimum, we should preserve the services we have now while we work to make sure they are viable for the future.”
A $7.5 million override would allow the town to “tread water,” Epstein said, funding essential services and preserving the existing headcount of town and school workers with no headcount growth over the next three fiscal years. An override of $8.4 million would allow for some “strategic investments.”
“I suspect $8.4 [million] is the number, and I’m nervous about that because it is a big number,” Epstein said. “I’ve said over and over again, proposing an override isn’t the issue; it’s passing the override that counts.”
While some School Committee members have proposed an override of more than $10 million, Epstein said Select Board members believe a number of that magnitude “is a non-starter in terms of what would be successful.”
Chair of the Warrant Committee Geoff Lubien said a minimum of $7.5 million is necessary to maintain staffing levels or full-time equivalents from fiscal 2024-2025. Whether or not an override will pass is “a tough question many of us are struggling with,” he said via email. “It is difficult to obtain a true measure of support out there until the results are in on the night of April 2.”
If no override is passed, there would be drastic cuts to personnel and services on the town and school sides of the budget, Epstein said. A list of potential cuts on the town website for Fiscal Year 2025 includes eliminating tree planting from the DPW operating budget; removing motorcycles and body cameras, and reducing vehicle replacements and supplies from the police budget; freezing firefighter hiring; removing a social worker from the Health Department; laying off personnel; reducing polling locations; and cutting a clerk position for the treasurer’s office. For fiscal year 2026, the list includes potentially privatizing trash, recycling, solid waste pick up, and reducing library hours.
If each staff position is roughly $100,000 between salary and benefits, and there is a $7 million budget gap, that eliminates 70 positions or the equivalent, Epstein said. If layoffs are avoided, cuts must be made elsewhere, which could mean closing a fire station or a school.
“These are unpalatable choices we might be forced into in a no-override situation,” he said.
Epstein said the deficit has been an “endemic” issue in Belmont primarily due to school enrollment numbers in the early 2000s.
“Unlike similar towns, our enrollment skyrocketed, that’s why we ended up building a new school,” he said. “To handle the giant influx of students, we had to hire a lot of staff. Teachers’ salaries have contractual increases that are pretty substantial.”
Salaries, combined with a large special education population requiring out-of-district placements, have been extremely expensive,” Epstein said.
“It created a requirement for more and more spending that outruns revenue, which is a recipe for having a deficit,” he said.
School Superintendent Jill Geiser was unavailable for comment directly. At a School Committee meeting on Jan. 9, Geiser said the district must cut $2.7 million to meet available revenue in fiscal 2025.
A school budget development draft for fiscal 2025 states if an override does not pass, there would be a “significant reduction from the level of service the district is currently providing through its general fund.” The proposed scenario keeps basic operations in place but impacts professional development, transportation, extracurricular activities, classroom resources, technology, curricula, support staff, administration, libraries, faculty, and school buildings.
Belmont residents passed an override in 2015, but a proposed $6.4 million override in 2021 was defeated. Free cash and federal COVID-19 funds were used to supplement subsequent budgets, but those funds have long since expired.
Epstein said staffing levels on the town side have been reduced over the years and positions eliminated to the point that DPW staffing levels are 30% below what they were 25 years ago.
“From my perspective, the staff is at a skeletal level and many services have been curtailed. That was one of the ways in which the need for an override was postponed. We can’t postpone it any longer.”
