The Wellesley Select Board and School Committee each debriefed a week after the conclusion of Annual Town Meeting, the first in decades that featured separately voted on town and school budgets. The budget presentations, discussion, and voting took place on the second night of Town Meeting, and went smoothly.

Select Board members who commented at their April 14 meeting (see Wellesley Media recording) said they thought the separation of the budgets worked well, and Executive Director Meghan Jop said that now that a process for doing so has been put in place, it should be easier to collect the necessarily information on shared service breakouts, etc.

Board Chair Marjorie Freiman said “for me, because [school] enrollment is dynamic, and we’re always going to have an examination of shared costs and direct costs, I liked seeing them separately. So I would support keeping the two budgets in separate motions…”

Beth Sullivan Woods agreed, saying that having the separate school and town budget presentations provides “a good chance to take a break and talk and then let people focus on the next thing.”

Board member Colette Aufranc also supported the separate budget presentations, though wondered how handling this would go for town staff going forward. Jop said “now that we have allocated how we would break up the budget based upon particular line items… I think it’s easier to employ,” adding that forms are in place now and people know how to fill them out.

There was some discussion of whether or not it would be a good idea to have additional departmental updates shared at Town Meeting, where one goal has been to make the legislative sessions more efficient. The board discussed doing a better job of letting Town Meeting members and others know when departmental leaders are sharing updates with the board. This would complement Swellesley’s weekly previews on town government meeting agendas and reports on departmental updates, such as from the fire and police chiefs.

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The Select Board also discussed Town Meeting attendance (we’re working to get this from the town clerk, though the voting scorecards posted by the town give you much of this), audio/visual issues, and the order in which the Town-Wide Financial Plan is presented during Town Meeting. The plan this year had been to present the Town-Wide Financial Plan on night #2, ahead of the town and school budget presentations, but it got moved up to night #1 after members requested it be aired ahead of any appropriations-related motions.

The School Committee and School Department, which had earlier expressed reservations about moving away from an omnibus budget to separate town and school ones, also debriefed on April 14 about Town Meeting (see Wellesley Media recording, about 1 hour, 33 minutes in).

School Committee Chair Niki Ofenloch said she was pleased overall with out how things went. “We were not sure how the conversation or the vote would go with the separate motions this year and it seemed like it was pretty much the same as it was in the prior year, just with two votes instead of one,” she said.

New School Committee member Bob Sullivan agreed that things went smoothly at Town Meeting and that the schools’ budget book answered many questions the public had. But in stepping back, he raised a point about lots of potential town and school capital projects putting even more budgetary pressure on schools. He cited concerns raised during Advisory Committee meetings ahead of Town Meeting about student-facing vs. administrative headcount and overall district performance. “It’s going to be incumbent upon us to make sure that we have, particularly in this environment, the support of different constituencies,” he said, noting that not all Advisory members voted favorable action on the school budget. The schools need to ensure the data they have is made understandable.

Costas Panagopoulos, also a new committee member, agreed that the schools will need to focus on justifying any reductions in student-facing positions given the sorts of questions raised along the way (school administrators have spoken of how certain non-student-facing positions are tweeners in that they enable teachers to improve what they do). “Because Town Meeting members can’t look at the school budget line by line and make modifications, we don’t want to create a situation which because they don’t like one small part of this budget they end up voting the whole thing down. We escaped that kind of fate this time around, but that is not necessarily always going to be the case…,” he said, noting that some on Advisory appeared to be fine with the budget overall but not with certain elements of it. (Supt. Dr. David Lussier said later in the meeting that the administration understands the need to bring further clarity to staffing decisions.)

Panagopoulos also pointed to decisions made at Town Meeting on non-school topics (like not funding a Comprehensive Plan) that illustrate “that there’s an appetite in this town for doing certain things, but not all things.” The School Department and School Committee will need to come to Town Meetings with very strong cases for resources they might request, such as for school facilities master planning. “We should be ready for Plan B if [support] does not materialize” in the face of possible large tax increases, he said.

Linda Chow stood by the School Department’s transparency in answering questions about its budget well before Town Meeting, and described the separation of budgets as essentially pitting schools vs. the rest of the town. It also introduces the risk that one or the other budget could get voted down, and the uncertainty of what would happen in such a case, she said.

Annual Town Meeting 2026 recaps:

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