First night of Wellesley Annual Town Meeting features twists & turns

March 31, 2026

Wellesley Executive Director Meghan Jop said toward the end of her presentation on Annual Town Meeting’s opening night this week that “Town Meeting is a year-round engagement.” True enough, though there are some things you only see at Town Meeting itself, and we saw them early on.

The game plan at the outset of the March 30 session of the town’s legislative body at Wellesley High School was to bump Article 2 (“receiving reports of the Select Board on the Town-Wide Financial Plan and Five-Year Capital Budget Program”) to Tuesday night. Article 2 would serve as a table setter for Article 8’s motions on fiscal year ’27 town and school budgets, separated this year for the first time in decades.

But Town Meeting member Marlene Allen early in the meeting raised a point of order, citing town bylaw 19.16.2.d, which calls for an oral report on the Town-Wide Financial Plan ahead of Town Meeting considering any appropriation-related articles. She called this year’s edition of the plan “exceptionally informative,” but only useful before appropriations are considered. Kaplan responded to the point of order, which he thanked Allen for giving him a heads up about. But he denied the action requested, determining that Article 2 would remain on the next night’s agenda—a few appropriations-related articles slated to be discussed on Monday would be left open until after the Town-Wide Financial Plan was presented, and then those other articles would be closed.

But this wasn’t over.

Kaplan moved on to Article 3, the consent agenda. This was supposed to be the easy one, even though the consent agenda this year was beefier than usual at more than a dozen motions. Under the consent agenda, whose motions are selected based on them being seemingly straightforward and non-controversial, Town Meeting gets to vote on a bunch of stuff in one fell swoop.

Once in a while, a Town Meeting member will rise to request an item be taken off the consent agenda to allow discussion. This time around, Town Meeting member Michael D’Ortenzio rose to ask that motion 3 (HR Department Supplemental Appropriation) under Article 7 be withdrawn. Then then stayed at the mic and asked, one by one, that a total of 10 motions be removed from the consent agenda for later discussion.

All that prompted Kaplan to announce that an earlier indication from him that he expected Town Meeting to wrap in three nights should be amended, and that members should plan to be available for a fourth session on April 7.

It also led to Select Board Chair Marjorie Freiman moving that Article 3, the consent agenda, be “laid on the table” so that Town Meeting could take up Article 2 on Monday night after all. Town Meeting supported that motion by a 163/23/5 vote, and on to Article 2 it was.

Over the next hour, Freiman, Jop, and David Kornwitz (chair of the Retirement Board) went over the Town-Wide Financial Plan, Five-Year Capital Budget Program, and funding for pensions and other post-employment benefits (OPEB).

Freiman kicked things off, introducing the Town-Wide Financial Plan, which sums up the budget process, presents the current year operating budgets and drivers, and looks ahead to three upcoming budgets. “It is the town’s key financial narrative document,” she said, adding that the town is keeping reserves at higher-than-usual levels given the state of the market.

The plan also lays out numerous significant capital projects requested by boards and committees (school air conditioning, reconstruction of Morses Pond recreational facilities, PFAS remediation, and more) and their impact on debt and tax bills, plus the status of reserves. “We need to be realistic about what we need and what we can afford,” said Freiman, after citing Boston Globe reporting on big override votes in peer communities in the face of rising operating and capital costs. Wellesley has created a Town-wide Capital Planning Committee that beginning this spring will begin work on presenting an annual comprehensive capital planning proposal to the Select Board.

“The Select Board is responsible for informing Town Meeting members fully of the upcoming budget and capital project planning. It is each Town Meeting member’s responsibility to evaluate proposals in a town-wide context over the course of many years, to weigh the merits of each proposal, understand that debt exclusions or overrides may be the only method of funding certain projects or operating expenses, and determine taxpayers’ ability and willingness to fund each one as proposed,” she said. Like Jop later, Freiman stressed that people in town will need to pay attention and get involved in budget-related plans throughout the year.

Jop said creation of the Town-Wide Financial Plan starts right after Annual Town Meeting ends, and then incorporates actual financial results as they become available over the summer. Wellesley has had a strong FY26 financially, thanks in part to strong interest earnings, as it plans for FY27 and beyond. The town is coming to Town Meeting with an overall proposed budget of about $226m that’s balanced and delivering largely level services during a year with many union contracts to seal. While health care costs are a killer, Wellesley is feeling good about its participation in the West Suburban Health Group, which is seeing relatively low rate increases. In out years, Wellesley could be looking at debt exclusions to pay for big capital projects, but also can look forward to declining costs for pensions and OPEB, as Kornwitz detailed during his presentation.

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Wellesley has the “absolute best funded retirement and retiree health systems in the Commonwealth” thanks in large part to town decisions made earlier in the 2000s to pre-fund OPEB, giving it a head start on other municipalities, Kornwitz said. He dove into details of the board’s guiding principles that have paid off over the years, including mitigating major downside investment risk. “We believe it’s okay to sacrifice some upside potential to reduce risk and volatility of the plan, especially as it’s getting closer and closer to full funding…,” he said, adding that “actuarial smoothing techniques” are used to provide stability.

In distilling Kornwitz’s presentation, Jop spoke of how the town in years to come will be able to pull hundreds of healthcare policies from its operating budget to be covered by the OPEB trust.

Jop wrapped up by discussing capital and debt, and detailed more than $2m in planned free cash spending on projects outlined in later articles like the Weston Road and Linden Street intersection redesign and DPW campus/Municipal Service Building feasibility study.

Town Meeting members had just a couple of questions for the presenters, then the motion was approved.

Following the presentations under Article 2, D’Ortenzio returned to the mic and withdrew his consent agenda withdrawals under Article 3. He explained that he made the original withdrawal requests because he had agreed with fellow member Allen’s earlier point of order about Article 2, and thought that the presentations and questions following them on Monday night were helpful.

The consent agenda motion passed by a vote of 173/2/0 after another Town Meeting member requested just one item be removed for later discussion.

Town Meeting ended with a few motions under Articles 5 and 6. In short, town employees, including the town clerk, are getting paid.

More: Town Meeting scorecard

Town Meeting history

Moderator Mark Kaplan started off Town Meeting with a little history lesson about the role town meeting played in the American Revolution, in recognition of the upcoming 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. John Hancock, Kaplan relayed, got his start as moderator of the town meeting—the only form of local government at the time—in Boston. “I certainly didn’t know that and wonder that means for the future for me,” Kaplan quipped. Town meetings had an important influence on the development of the Declaration of Independence.

In Memoriam

An annual practice at Town Meeting is to honor past members and other major town contributors who have died.

Five people—William Charlton, Richard Macintosh, Laurance Fitzmaurice, Nancy Saunders, and Jane Kettendorft—were honored.

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Liking the Red Sox’s chances

Moderator Kaplan tested the electronic voting system by asking a test question: Will the Red Sox make it to the World Series? The vote: 104 yes, 77 no, 7 abstaining.

The Sox have their home opener slated for Friday, April 3. No Town Meeting session that day.

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