WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — A planned discussion on priorities for the town's fiscal year 2027 spending plan Monday quickly pivoted to the latest in a series of Town Hall conversations about anemic growth in the town's property tax base.

 

The Select Board's agenda called for a discussion outlined in the bylaw for board members to share their priorities with the town manager as he or she enters budget season.

 

The main takeaway at the end of an hour-long discussion is that the current board shares the top priority the board proposed for the FY25 budget: "limiting overall tax burden."

 

Increasing pressure on property taxpayers was front and center after Town Manager Robert Menicocci, at the request of Chair Stephanie Boyd, led off the consideration of the FY27 budget.

 

Menicocci told the board that Williamstown has a "structural problem" in that revenues are not keeping pace with the rising cost of delivering town services.

 

Far from it, in fact, he said.

 

Echoing conversations that have taken place repeatedly in the town's Finance Committee, with the Select Board and among the local business community, Menicocci showed how the lack of "new growth" in the tax base is both driving up the tax bills of existing property owners — mostly homeowners — while eating away at the town's excess levy capacity.

 

The levy capacity represents how much more Williamstown could collect in taxes over the FY26 levy of $21.9 million, without going to a Proposition 2 1/2 override vote.

 

In the current fiscal year, that excess capacity is $2.7 million, a 19 percent drop from FY25.

 

Menicocci noted that puts the town in a better position than many municipalities around the commonwealth, but he sees the trend line of rising costs and slow growth in revenue whittling away at the capacity in as few as 10 years, according to a table he shared with the board on Monday night.

 

"All of this is to say to you guys that fresh new ideas for spending are probably not a good idea right now," Menicocci told the board.

 

That said, Boyd invited her colleagues to share what they saw as potential initiatives the town should explore — whether or not they would require new funding.

 

"As Bob suggested, we're not in the space to spend money on things that need to be addressed," Shana Dixon said.

 

The other two members of the board agreed.

 

Peter Beck told Menicocci to "maintain a frugal budget without being pennywise and pound foolish," pointing to keeping an eye on maintaining current infrastructure.

 

Matthew Neely and Beck joined Menicocci's call to support efforts to increase the tax base.

 

"I've lived in this town most of my life, and growth has always been a concern," Neely said. "We're really good at conserving things — conservation and farmland and rural lands, which are all good things. But we're not good at development for the most part.

 

"Ideally, you wouldn't want to see things change. But if you want to continue to have the high standards we have for town government and the schools, we do need growth."

 

Neely — and, later, Fin Comm Chair Frederick Puddester — pointed out that residents and, sometimes, elected and appointed officials, have been actively opposed to new development that would have added to the tax base.

 

"Unfortunately, with … the Grange, the water line out to South Williamstown — a lot of these things, we've shot ourselves in the foot in the interest of, frankly, NIMBY and preserving the status quo," Neely said.

 

Boyd suggested, at one point, that the town could do more to market Williamstown and encourage development. Menicocci replied that it is, "hard to get on the soapbox and say we're open for business," in light of events like those Neely referenced.

 

Menicocci did say there are concrete steps that the town can take to support the development of new businesses, telling the board that the developer who purchased Main Street's Orchards hotel property in 2024 is talking with Town Hall about a tax increment financing agreement or TIF.

 

The town manager also mentioned a potential storm cloud on the expense side of the town's ledger: needed work to stabilize the bank of the Hoosic River in three different locations — at the site of a capped landfill on Williams College's property, near the junction of North Street and Syndicate Road and near the sewage treatment plant operated by the Hoosac Water Quality District (a shared venture with the city of North Adams and town of Clarksburg).

 

"Talking about [budget] priorities, I hope the conversation isn't thinking about, 'Let's find new ways to spend money,' " Menicocci said. "As a policy-making body, it would be helpful if [the discussion] addresses what revenue needs we have and trying to fill those gaps."

 

Only one member of the Select Board raised the possibility that the FY27 spending plan that goes to town meeting in May could include some additional discretionary spending.

 

"Another way to leverage our funds may be to work with organizations that are providing some services," Boyd said. "For example, Sand Springs Pool, where we have a community group that's trying to make that pool viable. Can we leverage a small amount of Williamstown [tax] money to make that facility more available to more people? I'm just using that as an example. I'm not advocating that.

 

"We live in a town that is very wealthy. We look at ourselves in the context of Berkshire County, we're doing pretty well. I don't think we should be really worried. We do have to be careful and frugal and thoughtful about how we spend our money. But we do have some money to spend. And we have to choose among different things."

 

Last year, the Finance Committee signaled strongly that it had no interest in expanding the town's funding of non-profits beyond the three organizations that historically received allocations from free cash at town meeting: the Community Preschool, Chamber of Commerce and Youth Center.

 

Boyd offered to summarize the board's conversation in a memo to Menicocci in time to meet a Nov. 15 deadline specified in the bylaw.

 

"We do not run up against the levy limit," she said. "That's going to be rule No. 1 in our priorities."

 

In other business on Monday night, the Select Board appointed Russell Young to the Mobile Home Rent Control Board and considered whether to implement a Select Board policy governing the process for considering whether to exercise the town's right of first refusal on land changing hands when it comes out of the commonwealth's Chapter 61 program.

 

The issue of how to handle such land transfers came up in 2022 when a 10-acre parcel on Oblong Road was under contract for a private sale. The Select Board, exercising its 120-day period to consider the right of first refusal under Massachusetts General Law, ultimately assigned that right to the Williamstown Rural Lands Foundation, which acquired the property the next year.

 

Boyd drafted a proposed policy that would require the Select Board to wait at least 60 days to decide on whether to exercise the town's option to buy (or assign that option to a qualified non-profit) — enough time to consider input from other town boards and committees, like the Agricultural Commission and Conservation Commission.

 

On Monday, a member of the Finance Committee, Melissa Cragg, asked that body also be given the opportunity to provide input, given how land taken out of conservation might add to the property tax base.

 

Boyd asked her colleagues whether the procedure for considering the Chapter 61 decisions should be a board policy or a bylaw voted by town meeting. The other Select Board members agreed it made sense to keep it a policy that could be amended by future boards rather than waiting to go through a town meeting process.

 

They also discussed reducing the "minimum" time for such considerations to 45 days. But ultimately, they agreed to return to the proposed policy at a later date.