The Swellesley Report

Since 2005: More than you really want to know about Wellesley, Mass.

Legal Notice

Town of Wellesley: 2026 Special Town Meeting

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The Select Board will convene a Special Town Meeting on Monday, May 11, at 7:00 P.M at the Wellesley High School Auditorium, 50 Rice Street. The Warrant for the Special Town Meeting will close at 9:00 a.m. on Friday, April 24, 2026.

Any person desiring to have an article included in the Warrant for the Special Town Meeting shall submit a petition signed by not less than one hundred (100) registered voters of the Town. Any such petition shall be submitted to the Town Clerk for signature verification.

After being signed by the Select Board, the full text of the Special Town Meeting Warrant will be available from the Select Board Office located at 525 Washington Street and will be posted at the Town Clerk’s Office at 525 Washington Street, Police Station at 485 Washington Street and on the Town’s website (www.wellesleyma.gov).

Motions to be offered to the Special Town Meeting must be submitted digitally to the Select Board Office at sel@wellesleyma.gov by 12:00 p.m. on Tuesday, April 28, 2026.

WELLESLEY SELECT BOARD

     

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Wellesley Select Board, School Committee separately debrief on Annual Town Meeting

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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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Wellesley Annual Town Meeting dissolves following lengthy RIO zoning amendment discussion

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Wellesley Annual Town Meeting dissolved on Tuesday, April 7 after two thirds of the three-hour meeting was spent hashing out a proposed zoning amendment on a topic—Residential Incentive Overlays (RIOs)—that’s been much debated by the town’s legislative body over the past couple of years. The session also featured the first motion, under a separate Planning Board-sponsored article, to get shot down at this year’s Annual Town Meeting.

(See Wellesley Media recording to view the meeting and the Town Meeting scorecard to track voting)

It was clear ahead of Town Meeting that the motion under Article 32 to eliminate RIOs in Single Residence and a few other districts would likely spark one of the longest and most colorful discussions, and it didn’t disappoint. Because, you know, housing.

This was a motion that spurred local advocacy groups to rally their troops to hit up Town Meeting reps in support of eliminating RIOs not only in certain districts, but all of them via a possible amendment to the motion. RIOs allow for higher-density building than underlying zoning would permit.

Opposition to proposed uses of the RIO bylaw, which went on the books in 1998, came to a head in October, 2024, when proposed zoning map changes for a pair of multifamily housing developments got shot down at Special Town Meeting. RIOs were also front and center at Annual Town Meeting last April because of a citizen petition that sought to return the RIO bylaw to its original state. As the proponent explained during presentations, the focus of RIOs would again be on allowing multi-unit residential development in commercial areas but not in single residence and general residence districts.

A diverse 16-member RIO Task Force was then formed by the Planning Board. The task force met more than a dozen times and made recommendations to the Planning Board, which voted 3-1 for the motion language under Article 32 presented to Town Meeting this week (the task force’s preferred approach was to nix RIOs altogether, though the Planning Board went with a less extreme approach with the intention to keep working on the topic). Earlier motion language was revised after the Select Board Board pushed back on a recommendation regarding the proposed addition of a development agreement requirement to the project approval section of the RIO bylaw.

Article 32 gets its hearing

You knew Article 32 was different when Moderator Mark Kaplan asked the Planning Board’s Tom Taylor to read the motion under it: Usually the motion language isn’t read in order to move Town Meeting along, making the assumption that members have already read the motions. But in this case, an amendment or more to the motion was anticipated, as was a point of order regarding the amendment, so Kaplan sought to get everything spelled out clearly. As Taylor read, Article 32 would allow RIOs in a few zoned districts, those defined as Commercial, Industrial, General Residence, and Educational.

Taylor followed the reading with a brief presentation on the motion, which he indicated had its roots in a citizen petition from last year’s Annual Town Meeting that sought to remove RIOs from all zoning districts other than commercial ones. The motion captured 61% of Town Meeting votes, but not enough to satisfy the two-thirds rule to pass. So it was clear this was a subject on which the town was divided, and could warrant further review and ideas.

The appointed Advisory Committee, which vets Town Meeting motions ahead of the big event, recommended unfavorable action, 0 to 11, with 1 recusal and 1 abstention on the motion under Article 32.  Committee members cited different reasons for their lack of support, including that the RIO Task Force and Planning Board could potentially come up with a better solution given more time.

Taylor said that the Planning Board’s position was that the motion under Article 32 was “an important first step—going farther or less far are inferior alternatives.”

But some opposed to Article 32’s motion language brought forth an amendment, presented by Kara Reinhardt Block, a RIO Task Force member and Town Meeting rep for Precinct D, situated in Lower Falls. She presented an amendment designed to remove RIOs from all districts, not including the the four previously approved RIO projects, such as the Terrazza on Linden St. Reinhardt Block has spoken out in the past about the potential for limited changes to the RIO bylaw to increase the likelihood of multifamily housing developments in only certain sections of town, and she reiterated this point at this Town Meeting.

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Town Meeting member John Lanza rose to make a point of order, arguing that the proposed amendment should not be allowed for “going beyond the four corners of the proposed warrant article…” The original motion language was specific, he said, whereas the proposed amendment “seeks to abolish” the RIO district town-wide and is “the language of repeal.”

Moderator Kaplan then issued a prepared statement in which he contended that Article 32 did indeed give Town Meeting members “clear warning that the scope of Section 3.2.B of the zoning bylaw might be brought up for consideration at this Annual Town Meeting…” Earlier discussions at the Planning Board and Advisory Committee considered the possibility that an expanded motion might be filed, Kaplan noted, as part of his explanation for denying the point of order and allowing the amendment to be presented.

Reinhardt Block, given the go-ahead to speak by Kaplan, started out by saying that “there are many reasons to pause the RIO and fix it, but first and foremost among them is that the RIO is broken, and we have widely acknowledged that as a town body…” RIOs simply aren’t needed, Reinhardt Block said, given many other ways to build 17.4 units per acre in town (such as under the MBTA Communities Law) and the new availability of more developable land as a result of a huge amount of commercial property going on the market (she later shared photos of new or planned multi-family housing developments across town). [Read more…]

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Wellesley Symphony Orchestra, 2026

A marathon session for Public Works at Wellesley Annual Town Meeting night #3

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Wellesley Department of Public Works Director Dave Cohen drew a comparison early during night #3 of Wellesley Annual Town Meeting on April 6 between the upcoming Boston Marathon and his planned presentations, as the race courses through eight communities—including Wellesley—and he had eight presentations lined up. As far as Town Meeting sessions go, a bit over three hours was nothing out of the ordinary, though that would be a solid marathon time. (See Wellesley Media recording to view the meeting and the Town Meeting scorecard to track voting)

Fittingly, a version of Heartbreak Hill popped up more than halfway through the session when a fire curtain started to descend, interrupting a presentation on Article 20 regarding a proposed feasibility study for a possible DPW campus overhaul. Fortunately, the issue was addressed and the meeting was able to continue.

Speaking of running, mice scurrying across the stage also threatened to disrupt proceedings. But their antics only resulted in a sort of point of order raised to call attention to this “disorderly conduct.” It was later suggested by a Town Meeting member that the mice may have jumped ship from a dilapidated DPW building and made their way to Wellesley High… (Our theory is that the mice might have been there for a shot at some of the cake trotted out for the town’s 145th birthday.)

Public Works marathon

DPW Director Cohen began his night running uphill with Article 11, which asked Town Meeting to approve $14.4m in funding for the Water Enterprise Fund’s operating and capital expenses (including upgrades to a water distribution system that in some places is more than 100 years old). Water would be a theme early on during this night for several articles.

While Wellesley offers competitive water rates, the Board of Public Works anticipate customer bills rising by up to 20% for FY27, with PFAS treatment and projects a significant cost driver (PFAS refers to the “forever chemicals” that Wellesley and other communities seek to filter out of their public water supplies). The current drought conditions also portend lower-than-usual water usage in town, due to restrictions, and less water usage means less revenue for the town.

water town meeting

Before Town Meeting passed the motion under Article 11 unanimously by voice vote, Cohen fielded questions, including about capacity in the face of increased housing development in town (“plenty of capacity”) and how much PFAS settlement money might help reduce rates (it’s a drop in the bucket, so to speak).

From there it was on to Article 13, regarding about $3m in funding of the Enterprise Stormwater Fund, for which the town started collecting fees in FY25. The most common fee is $225 per year.

You don’t hear something like this every day in town, but the rates for Wellesley are holding steady, and Cohen said he anticipates that remaining so for the foreseeable future. Enterprise funds are set up to pay for themselves via the fees paid by customers, so each fund is run as a separate but related business within the DPW. For stormwater management, fees are based on a property owner’s amount of impervious area, and municipal properties are excluded.

This motion passed unanimously by voice vote.

Cohen got a brief respite during the presentation of motion 2 under Article 15, calling for the use of $750k in Community Preservation Fund money to partially fund the roughly $1.5m dredging of Duck Pond (0.8-acre body of water at Town Hall, and last dredged in 1986 and 2006) and Reeds Pond (1.9-acre body of water north of Rte. 9 not far from the Natick line, last dredged in 1998).

Though Cohen didn’t present, the DPW is a funding partner on this, along with the Natural Resources Commission. And in fact, NRC Director Brandon Schmitt presented on the motion. Dredging is a key strategy for ensuring the health of the town’s bodies of water within its open space. The revelation by Schmitt that Reeds Pond contains notable levels of arsenic got Town Meeting’s attention, and he said that like with PFAS, it’s unclear exactly what the source of the arsenic is (though agricultural pesticides are suspected). The motion passed unanimously by voice vote.

While dredging might not pull on Town Meeting members’ heartstrings, playground upgrades do. Motion 3 under Article 15 sought approval of $450k in funding for improvements at Perrin Park, the Hunnewell Field tot lot, and the Sprague playgrounds. The town’s in its third and final year of an effort to improve 18 playgrounds across school and NRC property, including upgrades to support accessibility. Funding for work at Fiske, Ouellet, Upham was approved last year, and work is slated for this year (there’s some hesitation to go full bore on the Upham upgrades until there’s more clarity on what might become of that property after the school closed in 2024). Town Meeting approved the latest funding request.

Next up was Article 16, under which a motion sought a half million dollar appropriation from free cash to replace and reconstruct the 40-plus-year-old Hunnewell Field irrigation system over the summer. Cohen was back again on this article, and shared this fund fact: the irrigation system is fed by stormwater and groundwater from the nearby aqueduct, not from town drinking water supplies. Design funding was previously approved, and construction was delayed in favor of other projects. Town Meeting approved the funds to complete this project.

The seemingly tireless Cohen returned for Article 19, under which $600k was sought for design of improvements to the Linden Street/Weston Road intersection. The design will include adding a left-hand turn from southbound on Weston Road to Linden Street, and full signalization to protect motorists, cyclists, and pedestrians. Questions were raised about whether improvements at this intersection could muck things up further at Weston Road and Rte. 135, though Cohen said improvements to that nearby intersection will be part of the broader Wellesley Square redevelopment project, and that the work on the two intersections will be synced up. Town Meeting approved the funding.

DPW campus project feasibility study & sticker shock

A few more Public Works motions would end the night, but the star of the show—taking up about an hour—was Article 20 regarding a proposed DPW Campus/Municipal Service Building Feasibility Study. Cohen returned to the podium for this article, though Facilities Director Joe McDonough did the heavy lifting on this presentation. Their work paid off in Town Meeting vote of 142/38/1 to approve spending $858,000 from free cash for this study.

Board of Public Works Chair Jeff Wechsler—no doubt one of the happiest Town Meeting members after all BPW motions were approved AND the University of Michigan Wolverines won the men’s NCAA basketball title that night—introduced Article 20. He prefaced remarks by Cohen and McDonough by describing the proposed study as being about “thoughtful, careful planning” about capital spending that should take place in the near and long terms.

Jeff Wechsler ATM
Jeff Wechsler definitely wanted to be at Town Meeting instead of watching the Big Game

 

Cohen followed by providing context for the latest ask, which following a master planning process started post-pandemic to see how the Municipal Way campus might best be used to address the outdatedness of a mishmash of facilities (including a 78-year old Park & Highway building) and best accommodate DPW, Municipal Light Plant, and perhaps other land use departments in town currently housed in leased property on Rte. 9 that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. Considerations people might not think about are that there aren’t sufficient facilities to house and clean those pricey town trucks that kids and adults love to touch during Wellesley Wonderful Weekend—and that having such facilities could extend the vehicles’ useful lives. The master planning also looked at issues like safety related to members of the public visiting the area.

McDonough described the DPW campus effort as one of the anchor projects to be considered under the Wellesley’s new Town-Wide Capital Planning Committee that’s designed to think broadly about potential upcoming and expensive capital projects.

“Many of you have heard about the $100m project—that was a very early concept number that was the full all-in build-out,” McDonough said, noting that a reason for doing the feasibility study is to figure out how to go forward with a project in “manageable bites.” He displayed some possible phased approaches to the proposed project.

feasibility study

The feasibility study would provide comprehensive assessment from the start, with the idea of containing design and construction costs deeper into whatever project or projects are undertaken. “Feasibility is a very small fraction of the total project cost,” he said, and should be good for five-plus years even if the project gets delayed.

The Advisory Committee voted favorable action by a 10-2 vote, though there were concerns about the timing of the proposed study and some “sticker shock” at the cost. Such sticker shock was echoed by several Town Meeting members in their comments following McDonough’s presentation, with references to the impact this will have on already escalating property taxes.

Though some who have visited the DPW campus also confirmed the horrible condition of some of the current buildings in question, and backed funding the feasibility study. One Town Meeting member advocated for the feasibility study as a way to come up with a “coherent facility,” as was done when building the high school itself where Town Meeting was taking place.

It was clear from some Town Meeting members’ questions and comments that there’s study fatigue as well in Wellesley stemming from the seemingly endless feasibility, design, construction and you-name-it consulting contracts handed out by the town. A query was made about the potential for doing some of the study with in-house resources, for example.

Proposed RIO amendment to highlight final night of Annual Town Meeting

Town Meeting is expected to wrap up on April 7, with a proposed zoning amendment under Article 32 potentially providing some final fireworks. The Planning Board seeks to amend the Zoning Bylaws to eliminate Residential Incentive Overlay (RIO) designations in all single residence zoning districts (and some other districts), while keeping the RIO option available for zoning districts of other classifications. This housing-related topic has been a hot button issue at other Town Meetings in Wellesley of late.

Our earlier Annual Town Meeting coverage:

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Wellesley Kitchen and Home Tour
Hunnewell Fun Fair 2026

Almost a ‘curtain call’ for Wellesley Town Meeting at high school, but show will go on

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Shortly before the two-hour mark of Wellesley Annual Town Meeting on Monday, April 6, Moderator Mark Kaplan broke into Facilities Director Joe McDonough’s presentation about a proposed feasibility study for a possible Department of Public Works campus renovation with a breaking news report….

“Mr. McDonough, sorry to interrupt, but we have a little problem up here, maybe more than a little bit… we’re just going to take a 5-1o minute break to sort it out, ” he said, referring to what turned out to be a mechanical malfunction involving the stage’s fire curtain at Wellesley High School (See Wellesley Media recording).

Fire curtains are protection systems designed to descend from the ceiling during a fire to compartmentalize areas and allow people to pass through escape routes safely.

You’ll notice the backdrop behind McDonough changed before and after the incident.

Town Meeting night 3 curtain
Joe McDonough speaking before the curtain incident…
Town Meeting night 3 curtain
… and after (Wellesley Media recording screenshots)

Kaplan ended the third session of Annual Town Meeting letting attendees know that there was a possibility that the location would need to be changed for Tuesday night due to fire code. That could have had numerous implications, challenging the Wellesley Media team to stream and record the meeting, and leading to possible issues with meeting notification rules. “See you tomorrow night, somewhere,” Kaplan said, after instructing people to check their emails for updates on Tuesday.

According to the town on Tuesday, Annual Town Meeting will continue at Wellesley High’s Katherine L. Babson Jr. Auditorium on Tuesday, April 7 at 7pm for what should be the finale.

“The Wellesley Fire Department has determined the auditorium may remain in use on a temporary basis while corrective repairs are made. For this evening’s session, a fire fighter will be present during the meeting to monitor safety conditions, and a custodial staff member will be on site for additional support. These interim measures ensure that all safety protocols are in place while the mechanical issue is being resolved,” Town Clerk K.C. Kato wrote.

Our earlier Annual Town Meeting coverage:

Thousands turn to The Swellesley Report daily to keep current on Wellesley:

Rotary Club, Taste of Wellesley

Wellesley Annual Town Meeting night #2: Split budget motions go smoothly, get approved

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Wellesley Town Meeting on Tuesday, March 31 for the first time in decades voted on separate motions for town and school budgets. This dramatic change in protocol—proposed during last year’s Town Meeting and put forward by the Select Board for this spring—actually did not result in any dramatic results. Each motion, 8.2 for the town budget and 8.3 for the school budget, was overwhelmingly approved after just over an hour of presentations and questions/comments.

(See Wellesley Media recording of the March 31 session.)

The overall town and school budget adds up to $226.2m, with $121.5m on the municipal side, $96.8 on the school side, and $2.8 for free cash to balance the budget. The budget represents less than a 1% increase from the previous year’s, due largely to a smaller application of free cash for FY27 (which starts on July 1, 2026).

Municipal (non-school) budget

Presentations on the roughly $121.5m municipal budget were made by reps for the town, the Department of Public Works, and the Board of Library Trustees.

Select Board Chair Marjorie Freiman explained that splitting the town and school budgets into separate motions was done to allow for a clearer picture to Town Meeting members and residents of how funds under the overall budget (aka, omnibus budget) are spent when you break out shared expenses like those for healthcare.

“This was a challenging budget year in which the board requested level service budgets and maintenance of all staffing levels,” Freiman said, noting serious consideration was given to anticipated significant healthcare cost increases (that turned out not to be so large after all). “Boards and departments worked diligently to meet” the budget guidelines set out by the Select Board, she said. The town is also bargaining with all unions this year as it seeks to satisfy employees and maintain competitiveness in hiring and retaining these workers.

Beyond operating budgets, the board had requested a review of cash capital carryover from previous years and it was revealed that $6m was available from projects not started or completed. These available funds made it possible for the board to decrease cash capital outlays for FY27.

Wellesley Executive Director Meghan Jop took over the town presentation from there, building on her talk the previous night about the Town-Wide Financial Plan.

omnibus budget 27

One thing Jop and other town leaders have touted is Wellesley’s avoidance of an operating budget override for the 12th straight year, even as other communities are approving overrides or putting them up for vote (Natick, for example, adopted a $7m override last year). Wellesley continues to make conservative revenue assumptions, and is attempting to keep spending in line with that, having recommended 3% budget increases for most departments, including the big ones.

One area where revenue has increased is via motor vehicle excise taxes, as new multifamily housing developments have brought more cars to town. One area where expenses are lower relates to pension and other post-employment benefits (OPEB) contributions, as those programs get closer to being fully funded.

Department of Public Works Director Dave Cohen started off his dive into the proposed DPW level-services budget by joking about “there being no snow in the forecast,” an allusion to the busy winter his team had clearing snow and ice from Wellesley roads.

Among items he pointed out were $532k in capital deferrals to help the down balance its budget, and a projected decrease in Recycling & Disposal Facility revenue for FY27. Capital funds will be used in the coming fiscal year for street improvements, playing fields work, and vehicle replacement, among other things.

Marla Robinson, Chair for the Board of Library Trustees, rounded out the town budget presentations. It was another busy year for the library system, which had some 358k visitors. Robinson previewed that the Hills branch is in for interior and website upgrades this year thanks to a private donation.

The library system’s budget is going up slightly, largely as a result of step increases for employees who are hitting thresholds in their careers. Also of note, the library is consolidating two part-time positions into one full-time job. $25k was removed from planned cash capital for parking lot improvements as a result of town-wide efforts to contain capital costs.

The Advisory Committee had a favorable recommendation for the town budget, and Town Meeting members had just a handful of questions for presenters. The town has improved its public facing documents, such as the Town-Wide Financial Plan, in recent years. (That, combined with ongoing reporting from Swellesley, has helped to make for a more informed Town Meeting and public. Hey, everyone else at Town Meeting was patting themselves and their teams on the back, so why not us?)

Questions from Town Meeting members focused on breaking out the shared costs for schools ($44.9m, per the Town-Wide Financial Plan presentation, page 4), as well as funding for police mental health expenses and those related to dealing with federal agencies and for emerging fire department challenges like fighting battery fires (Town Meeting was assured all of this is property funded).

Article 8 Motion 2 passed by a count of 199/2/0 (this vote total represents about 84% of Town Meeting members).

School budget

Before School Committee and School Department presenters addressed Town Meeting, Moderator Mark Kaplan made clear what the town legislative body’s role is regarding the $98.6m school budget, which meets the Select Board’s 3% increase guideline and represents the lowest percentage increase since FY23. Unlike with the broader town budget, Town Meeting members cannot based on state statute make any motions to increase or decrease line items within the school budget.

The budget was settled upon “through a close calibration of student enrollment and individual student needs to staffing needs rather than cuts to programming,” said School Committee Chair Niki Ofenloch. “This is a far different story than many of our peer districts which are facing drastic cuts to programming or budget overrides, or both.” The School Committee refers to its budget as being largely a level-service one, with a few “modest investments” totaling about $26k focused on strategic priorities.

Supt. Dr. David Lussier, feeling at home at Wellesley High School, took things from there. He presented the proposed Wellesley Public Schools budget for fiscal year 2027  and thanked Assistant Superintendent of Finance and Operations Cindy Mahr for work on what he said will be her last WPS budget (she’s taking the Chief Financial Officer job at Hopkinton Public Schools).

“The story of the WPS budget for FY27 is a story of maintaining a focus on academic excellence and social/emotional health of our students while also navigating a very tricky and complicated fiscal landscape both for our school resources and that for the town as well,” Lussier said, noting that WPS is heading into year four of a 5-year strategic plan that guides its efforts.

Lussier referred to 10-year longitudinal analysis done to help gain and share understanding of why costs are rising as enrollment declines—a regular focus for Town Meeting members and others in town.

“I think the headline here is that any savings from declining enrollment doesn’t come close to offsetting the non-discretionary increases in spending, a trend that has been well documented in communities throughout the Commonwealth,” he said.

As always, Lussier shared enrollment charts showing declines and increases over the years, and of course the declines in recent years (along with decreases in the number of elementary school sections). One result of shrinking enrollment will be the cutting of 12 full-time equivalents, amounting to $968k in savings; Lussier broke out the specifics on which positions are coming and going.

enrollment

The superintendent pointed to big increases for this services organization in personnel costs—they’re up about 32% over 10 years—and staff compensation makes up the bulk of WPS’s budget (and this is another collective bargaining year).

Lussier also referred to mandated services, such as special education, and rising transportation costs (student fees remain the same in FY27); on special ed, he said the town saves millions by keeping students within the district when possible, and expects to generate a couple hundred thousand in revenue in FY27 by serving students from out of district.

The Advisory Committee made a favorable recommendation by a vote of 9-3, with one abstention. Those not in support wanted to send schools a message about school performance, administrative vs. student facing investments, and general transparency. Though others worried about the ramifications of what not passing the budget would be, such as requiring a Special Town Meeting in the near-term.

Town Meeting members hit school reps with a flurry of questions. Patti Quigley complimented the schools on what she said was a budget featuring any number you could want to find. She asked, after pointing to data about classroom sizes, at what point more school consolidation would be an option. Lussier said that was a difficult question, as class sizes per school vary based on each student cohort. The schools will soon get results of an externally-run enrollment report that will provide more information, though he said the expectation is that elementary school population is expected to remain pretty steady. He spoke of the lack of appetite in town by many to move away from the neighborhood school model. “Right now we really don’t see a pathway that we could consolidate from six to five schools,” he said.

Lussier was also asked about projections for incoming students based on new housing developments in town, and why past projections have been off. The superintendent said projections are based in part on what is seen at neighboring communities. Town Meeting member Don Shepard suggested that perhaps the demographics of families moving into the Wellesley developments differ from those in other communities, and have fewer school-age kids. Lussier said the new enrollment study might have relevant findings on this matter.

Some questions had to be anticipated, as they are raised regularly at Town Meeting or other forums.

Town Meeting member Paul Merry wanted to know where things stand on staff diversity related to student diversity. Lussier said the school system has been focused on this for a while and has had some marginal success, going from about 90% of teachers being white to 88% over the past few years, but with a declining staff and contractural rules in place that protect more senior employees, there are challenges to progress.

Town Meeting member Michael Tobin, after citing declining enrollment, asked about administrative headcount and costs. Lussier explained that “sometimes there can be confusion on what’s an administrative cost,” referring to staff such as math or reading coaches that support teachers but who may not be student facing. “Those kinds of support roles have represented the largest growth in district-wide positions supporting our schools. At a centralized staffing position our numbers are actually very lean compared to our neighboring communities,” he said.

Town Meeting approved the school budget by a vote of Passed 184-10.

Up next on Monday, April 6: Article 22 (Authorize Increase in Retirement Cost of Living Adjustment Base).

Also at Town Meeting

  • A $1.1m free cash transfer to the Board of Public Works as a supplemental appropriation to cover winter maintenance costs was approved via motion 1 under Article 7. This was an extreme winter, with 28 events requiring Department of Public Works action for snow and ice removal.
  • A request for a supplemental $200k appropriation (on top of the budgeted $480k) to cover legal expenses was approved. The state’s proposed housing plans on MassBay property was unexpected by the town, and prompted the Select Board to hire special counsel to assist in legal matters related to this. The Advisory Committee recommended favorable action by a 9-3 vote; Town Meeting members had no comments or questions, and approved motion 2 under Article 7 by voice vote. Moderator Kaplan had made clear there would be no opportunity to debate the pros and cons of the state’s MassBay plan itself.

More: Town Meeting scorecard

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Local government

First night of Wellesley Annual Town Meeting features twists & turns

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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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budget snapshot

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.

Thousands turn to The Swellesley Report daily to keep current on Wellesley:

Local government

Public Works-heavy Wellesley Town Meeting begins this week

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Wellesley’s Annual Town Meeting starts on Monday, March 30 at 7pm at the Wellesley High School, and hopes are for the lighter-than-usual warrant of articles to be discussed and voted over just a few nights. Wellesley Media will be live streaming and recording the sessions; anyone can also attend the meetings, even if not a Town Meeting member (you need to sit in the back if you’re not a member).

The final list of motions has been published, and indicates that a bunch of motions are either now under the consent agenda or won’t be brought forward after all. Motions are the items within articles on the warrant that Town Meeting votes on. Representative Town Meeting is Wellesley’s legislative branch.

The appointed Advisory Committee, which has been vetting articles and making recommendations on motions in recent months, has issued its report to the town.

The warrant this year is heavy on Board of Public Works-sponsored articles, including one about a feasibility study (costing $858k from free cash) for an overhaul of the Department of Public Works and Municipal Light Plant campuses. (Wellesley Town Meeting is something of a Super Bowl for consulting firms bidding on study contracts.)

Weston Road/Linden Street intersection redesign, Hunnewell Field irrigation improvements, and more are on the public works list for Town Meeting.

All eyes will also be on Article 8, with motions split out this year for town and school budgets. This approach was raised at last year’s Annual Town Meeting, with one argument for it being that the omnibus budget is just too darn for Town Meeting members to get their heads around. The Select Board got behind taking the split approach for 2026.

To get perhaps a sneak preview of discussion of this topic at Town Meeting, turn to the March 11 Advisory Committee session, about 35 minutes into Wellesley Media’s recording. Advisory recommended for favorable action on Article 8, Motion 2 (town budget) by a 12-0 count (with one abstention), but only 9-3 (with an abstention) for the roughly $97m public school system budget, a level services budget that met the Select Board’s increase guideline of 3%. Issues such as administrative vs. student facing positions, rising costs vs. falling enrollment, school performance, the continued need or not of neighborhood elementary schools, and general transparency were discussed. (See Advisory report to Town Meeting and in particular the “Executive Summary – Wellesley Public Schools’ Financial Model Overview and Context” document for more background.)

Town Meeting Replays schedule

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