WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Finance Committee on Wednesday voted to send town meeting a fiscal year 2026 spending plan that would raise property taxes by more than 7 percent in the year that begins on July 1.

 

The operating budget for town government is slated to go up by 6.1 percent, to just more than $10.6 million, and the bill for the town's public schools (the preK-12 Mount Greylock Regional School District and the Northern Berkshire Vocational Regional School District) is up by 8 percent, to a combined $15,243,392.

 

The main driver for all those increases is a 16 percent cost in health insurance for the labor-intensive business of providing town services and educating young people.

 

Both school officials and town staff presented budgets this winter that amounted to "level services" spending plans with minimal hikes in discretionary spending.

 

Over the last month, the nine-member town Finance Committee picked through the town budget proposed by Town Manager Robert Menicocci, inquiring about any line items that did see increases and looking for ways to trim at the margins.

 

In May, registered voters who attend town meeting will have the final say on whether to commit to the FY26 appropriations that the Fin Comm moved forward on Wednesday night.

 

Those votes will determine how much Williamstown has to raise from property taxes in the next fiscal year, but the tax rate it needs to set to bring in that revenue will not be determined until late summer. That is when the town assessor's office will complete the work of setting a valuation for the taxable properties in town.

 

On Wednesday evening, Finance Director David Fierro Jr. gave the Fin Comm an estimate of the property tax impact of the budget it passed.

 

Assuming no change in the total valuation of town properties — i.e., no "new growth" in the prior year, the tax bill of a median single family home in town would go up by 7.29 percent from FY25 to FY26, Fierro estimated.

 

That assumes, again, no new growth and no change in the median home value. A home valued at $439,100 in the current fiscal year has a tax bill of $6,060; a home with that same price tag would have a tax bill of $6,501.96 in FY26 under the hypothetical Fierro presented.

 

Embedded in the increases in the town's two main cost centers, town hall and schools, are nuances that make the increases even larger than the health insurance spike alone creates.

 

In the case of the regional vocational school district, McCann Tech, the Williamstown appropriation is up both because of the insurance-driven increase in the total budget and a higher percentage of that budget going to the Village Beautiful. While the total in-district enrollment at McCann Tech fell by 4.4 percent from 2024 to 2025 (499 to 477), the number of Williamstown residents attending the school rose from 19 to 22, a 1.6 percent hike that results in Williamstown accounting for 4.61 percent of the school's budget.

 

The Mount Greylock district, which serves most of the town's school-aged population, was impacted by a number of contractually-obligated pay increases to faculty who attained their master's degrees during the last year, among other cost increases outside the control of the administration.

 

And the town budget for FY26 includes a change in how Williamstown funds its support for non-profit agencies. In prior years, town meeting has voted to allocate funds to several non-profits, including, in the current fiscal year, the Williamstown Chamber of Commerce ($55,000), Williamstown Youth Center ($50,000) and Williamstown Community Preschool ($50,000).

 

Historically, those funds have come from the town's free cash, technically the Unreserved Fund Balance, which is the residue of higher than anticipated revenue or lower than anticipated spending in any given year.

 

For FY26, Menicocci decided to move the non-profit appropriations into the regular budget. The switch creates a one-time spike in the amount of money needed to be raised in taxation in the coming fiscal year, but that is offset by less reliance on free cash, which can be used for other needs.

 

No single budget line generated more discussion by the Fin Comm this winter than the non-profit grants, which amount to just .5 percent of a $26.4 million budget (which includes general government, schools and debt service).

 

That is because the town received funding requests from eight different non-profits totalling $455,000 — $305,000 more than it allocated at the May 2024 town meeting and $255,000 more than the most it ever awarded in a fiscal year.

 

Menicocci, in drafting the budget, used that $200,000 "high-water mark" as a placeholder in his spending plan.

 

The Finance Committee members knew from their first meeting of the winter that they were going to have to deal with that $255,000 difference. On Tuesday, they held a special meeting at which each of the eight non-profits made their case, elaborating on the lengthy applications each submitted to the town.

 

One night later, they voted to fund only the same three non-profits town meeting OK'd last May and cut funds for one of the three in half, lowering the total allocation to $130,000.

 

Michael Sussman began the conversation by moving that the committee support funding the three "legacy" non-profits at the full level they requested ($50,000 each for the youth center and preschool and $55,000 for the chamber) plus the $40,000 requested by Remedy Hall, a service organization created in 2023 to "provide individuals and families experiencing hardship with basic life necessities."

 

"I've come to this two ways," Sussman said. "One is we have historically supported the Chamber, the Youth Center and for a number of years Williamstown Community Preschool.

 

"The only one I'm adding is Remedy Hall, and that is clearly what they are doing for this town right now, when we are mentioning how the economics in this country is affecting us.

It is all manpower volunteer. It's hard for me not to support that."

 

Sussman's proposal would have brought the non-profit line item down from the $200,000 in Menicocci's draft budget to $195,000.

 

As for the rest of the non-profits — Images Cinema (seeking a one-time infusion of $50,000 to support off-site programs while it is closed for five months due to construction), the Williamstown Farmer's Market (seeking $10,000 for its operational budget), Sand Springs Recreation Center (seeking $50,000) and Purple Valley Trails (seeking $150,000 toward a $750,000 skate park project at the site of the current town-owned skate park) — the Fin Comm members expressed sympathy and suggested that they could help connect the agencies' volunteers with consultants to help train them in fund-raising.

 

"This is very painful," Paula Consolini said. "The organizations that came before us are doing fantastic work. A lot of us know other non-profits in town that are doing fantastic work."

 

Consolini referenced comments the Fin Comm heard on Tuesday from former member Dan Caplinger, who reminded the committee that he predicted a "slippery slope" with ever increasing numbers of non-profits seeking town funds.

 

"In looking at this process over the last seven years, I've come to the conclusion it's backward," Caplinger said. "Charitable organizations come to you and try to anticipate what your opinion of what the town needs is and try to wedge their charitable interest into what the town's interest is.

 

"I think that's backward. I think it's the job of the town government to determine what policy objectives and priorities the town has. I think it's the job of the Select Board and the town manager to determine the subject matter of that. I think it's the job of the Finance Committee to determine the financial capacity to take those on."

 

Vice Chair Suzanne Stinson said on Wednesday that she favored funding the three agencies that are receiving funds in the fiscal year that ends on June 30 because the town already is part of their funding structure.

 

"I think there are reasons why we have funded those particular ones in the past, with good judgment," Stinson said. "I would advocate for those three. Then I think there's an opportunity for additional discussion and support for the other applicants in other ways to prepare them to be self-sufficient."

 

Melissa Cragg agreed, saying that the town should not "intensify the sense of dependence" on tax money among the non-profits.

 

Consolini moved to amend Sussman's motion to remove Remedy Hall and cut the preschool's allocation to half of what it requested.

 

That amendment passed on a vote of 7-2, with Sussman and Rachel Tarses voting in the minority.

 

Sussman then tried again, moving to amend the motion to include Remedy Hall at $40,000, a step that still would have brought the line item down from Menicocci's $200,000 "placeholder" to $170,000. That amendment failed, 2-7, with Sussman and Tarses in the minority.

 

The committee then voted, 9-0, to approve the amended motion to set the non-profit line item at $130,000 with allocations to the youth center, preschool and chamber.

 

The Fin Comm voted, 9-0, to recommend town meeting approve all 15 articles related to town and school funding. But some of those articles saw adjustments as the result of the committee's deliberations.

 

One adjustment was to the Finance Committee's Reserve Fund, which was staked at $75,0000 in FY25. At the suggestion of Chair Fred Puddester, the proposed FY26 reserve will be $50,000, lowering the amount needed to be raised by taxation by 33 percent.

 

The reserve fund allows the Fin Comm to release money during the fiscal year to address unforeseen expenses without having to call a special town meeting. On Wednesday, Menicocci cited the example of severe storms in July that caused tens of thousands in damage.

 

"If there are no other options available, it will mean going back to the town for permission to appropriate or pull from reserves like Stabilization," Menicocci said, two steps that would require a special town meeting.

 

The committee voted 8-1, with Cragg in the minority, to reduce the appropriation for the reserve to $50,000.

 

And the committee voted, again at Puddester's urging, to apply $100,000 from free cash to the operating budget in order to lower the tax levy by that amount and cut in half Menicocci's requested appropriation for the Stabilization fund, from $100,000 to $50,000 and zero out the $50,000 Menicocci proposed allocating to the Compensated Absences Reserve Fund, which helps the town pay accrued employee benefits when an employee leaves the town's service.

 

The town's Compensated Absences Reserve Fund stands at just more then $280,000, including the FY25 contribution, Fierro said last week.

 

Menicocci had proposed funding both Stabilization and the Compensated Absences Reserve from free cash. That $100,000 now will go toward lowering the tax rate after the Fin Comm's 6-3 vote with Molly Magavern, Sussman and Stinson voting in the minority.

 

Although the Finance Comm has no authority over the town's Community Preservation Act expenditures, the Fin Comm followed its past practice of making recommendations to town meeting about the allocations advanced earlier this year by the Community Preservation Committee.

 

Following its 2002 adoption of the provisions of the Community Preservation Act, the town collects a 2 percent surcharge on property tax bills with the first $100,000 of a property's valuation exempted. The CPC each year reviews applications for CPA funds, which only can be used to support affordable housing, historic preservation or open space and recreation.

 

The CPA surcharge is a constant and has no impact on the tax levy that results from the operational budget that the Fin Comm reviews and sends to town meeting.

 

On Wednesday, the Fin Comm voted narrowly to recommend town meeting pass four of the seven CPA grants that will appear on the May meeting warrant and voted to recommend town meeting reject three of the seven grants.

 

Four members of the nine-person Finance Committee voted against each of the proposed CPA grants, following an argument made by Cragg, who said the town should not allocate any CPA funds until the CPC has completed a process of revising its application.

 

Puddester, Stinson and Margo Neely joined Cragg in voting against all seven CPA warrant articles.

 

Tarses joined them in a 4-5 vote on a CPA grant to the Store at Five Corners. And the Fin Comm similarly voted against recommending town meeting approval of two CPA grants to the New England Mountain Bike Association (one for the skate park and one for a mountain bike network on Berlin Mountain) by votes of 3-6 and 2-7.

 

According to town meeting minutes in the Williamstown archives, the May meeting only once has rejected a proposed grant advanced by the Community Preservation Committee.

 

The first year grants were awarded, the meeting voted down a proposal to award $20,000 "for an engineering study of a portion of the Lowry property for affordable housing." That article failed, 201-207 on a standing vote.

 

Both the Fin Comm and Select Board recommended town meeting approve the money for the Lowry property study, by votes of 4-2 and 5-0, respectively.

 

All the other CPA grants in ensuing years passed by either majority or unanimous voice vote with two exceptions. In 2006, town meeting went to a standing vote on a $50,000 grant to preserve open space at Caretaker Farms that passed, 177-46. Two years later, a standing vote was called on a grant of $740,000 in CPA funds for the Church Corner housing project; that passed, 346-38.