WHITMAN – If the people don’t know what’s going to happen when they say no to an override, they’re going to say no.
High Street resident John Galvin argued at the Tuesday, April 15 Select Board meeting that the success or failure of the override question hinges on fully informing voters.
“It won’t be pretty when the override fails, but in my opinion, it will unless you get the information out there of what services might get affected and how bad it’s going to be,” Galvin said. “Because people are just going to say, ‘Oh, they say that every year. It’s never going to happen.”
This year, the board’s contingency budget doesn’t mean, as it has in the past, an alternate plan for expending revenue in the event the override question fails – it means how the financial pain will be felt by town employees in the form of job losses if that happens, and how the public could see the resulting loss of services. But specific jobs at risk have not been listed.
The budget was, in fact, the only item of business on the agenda.
All of them will result in a variety of reductions to the town’s current staffing levels.
“If the override does not pass, the only option to balance the budget and close the deficit for fiscal 2026 is to reduce staffing,” said Town Administrator Mary Beth Carter, who stressed that services would be reduced before the town resorted to that. Carter said she has considered several different Fiscal ’26 contingency scenarios over the past few weeks.
“At this time, all options are being considered, however, all of the options, of course, are less than ideal,” she said adding that the reductions will, in turn, impact the services residents of Whitman currently receive.
“Departmental budgets will be scaled back to a minimum level before staffing reductions are considered. It’s our intention to keep any reductions in staffing and reductions to services to a minimum level, however the town could be facing reductions of up to 14 positions across the various town departments.”
High Street resident John Galvin said, with Town Meeting in three weeks, the Select Board must decide as quickly as possible, the details of such reductions.
“The people need to know, the voters need to know, the taxpayers need to know,” he said. “What happens if we vote no? The department heads need to know, the personnel need to know.”
Select Board member Shawn Kain, who is a member of the budget working group, argued that, while on one hand it’s good to know what services could be potentially lost, but to be respectful to people he doesn’t believe in putting people’s professional fate public.
Kain said there could be a couple of different strategies with an override such as trying to get the most shock value.
“I don’t support that,” he said. “I think if we have to put together a contingency plan – and it’s going to be about 14 full-time employees – I think we try to do it in the least impactful way possible.”
Carter said there are different ways departments could feel the effects of budget cuts if the override fails, such as expense lines, where she has “pulled everything back before we take the last step to reduce staff.”
“You have tiny departments – Planning Board and Bylaw Study Committee, little departments like that that we can make any adjustments in – but all the major departments will have some reductions in expenses, of course, or in staffing.”
Kain noted that there has been some discussion online about the use of free cash.
“I feel like we have some use of free cash that’s in line with our financial policy, embedded in the budget – about $340,000 in free cash – and for me, I think those are acceptable uses, because it’s short-term use. It’s not paying for personnel and regular budgetary items,” he said. “I would not support the use of free cash beyond what we currently have in the budget. I will not.”
He said it’s not meant to be a shock or scare tactic.
Carter said she had talked with John Adams of the accounting department, who is a former financial director, on Tuesday, who stressed and she knows as well, that free cash is one-time money that should not be used for recurring expenses.
Even with the $2 million override, she said the town is looking at a deficit of $1.8 million in fiscal 2027 ($2.6 million without an override), and a $3.9 million deficit for 2028.
“One of the reasons that we’re in the situation we’re in this year is because we used free cash last year,” she said. “If we were ever to use a large amount of free cash this year … it’s not even a Band-Aid. It’s a bad fiscal move.”
Free cash is the number one funding source for capital needs and using it to balance the budget would deplete that source.
“If you just start going down that path, using free cash to close the budget … auditors would not look [favorably] on that,” she said. Rating agencies also take that into consideration when deciding the town’s bond rating and the town could be downgraded in the future, leading to higher rates if the town needs to borrow in the future.
The $340,000 Kain mentioned is intended to used toward the Plymouth County Pension liability, that is expected to be paid off in 2030. Once that is paid up it will free up quite a bit of money in Whitman’s budget annually, which she then would like to see diverted to the other post-employment benefits [OPEB] liability, currently $140,000 a year paid from meals tax revenues, and some could be used in the regular budget. The pay-off of both liabilities also factors into the town’s bond rating calculations.
Select Board member Justin Evans said that, if Town Meeting supports the Select Board budget May 5, they will be waiting for the override ballot question result on May 17.
“If it passes, we have a balanced budget,” he said. “If it doesn’t, we have to start looking at these scenarios. But the clock really starts when the School Committee has 30 days to reassess the towns because they now have a rejected regional school budget. I imagine they’d do it sooner.”
The town would have 45 days to call a special Town Meeting at that point.
“The same process works for [South Shore Tech] if all four towns that have overrides on the ballot that are [SST] members, fail to pass a [SST] budget, [they’ll] do the same thing,” he said. “I don’t want to get into specifics right now to scare departments, but I think only … draft cuts number three scenario is even workable as a town – as devastating as it would be to all of our departments.”
He made a motion to recommend that scenario going forward.
“I think we deserve to start preparing for the worst because, right now, an override’s probably 50-50 at best,” Evans said.
Vice Chair Dan Salvucci, who was directing the meeting in the absence of Chair Dr. Carl Kowalski, said he would prefer to wait for a full board to decide that.
Police Chief Timothy Hanlon and Fire Chief Timothy Clancy offered a glimpse of the effect cuts could have in their departments as about five public safety job losses are anticipated if the override fails.
“For public safety, we think worst-case scenario first,” Hanlon said. “That’s the bleak outlook that we have to face now.” He said his department hasn’t been level serviced since at least 2012.
“In 2017, the townspeople spoke to increase our staffing from the 1970s [levels],” Clancy said. “Now that we’re being faced with the challenge of decreasing that staffing, it’s super disheartening. … If we start losing people, we start losing ambulances. If we start losing ambulances, we start losing revenue. When does it stop? … I’ve sworn to protect this town and I have to have the people to do it.”
Kain noted that the schools have not outlined specifics of the job cuts they anticipate other than that they want to stay away from elementary grade cuts with “a little at the middle schools and high school.”
“They deliberately left out the details because right now, for one, there’s a lot to be considered,” he said. “We don’t know how to calculate what we’re going to be up against because we don’t know exactly what the number is. Period.”
On Wednesday, April 9, the School District had outlined the effect an override failure will have in the schools.