ORANGE — The warrant for next week’s Special Town Meeting includes an article that could be critical to rectifying a mistake made eight years ago.
Town voters opted at an Oct. 26, 2017, Special Town Meeting to increase the number of Selectboard members from three to five, and the next election was held the following spring. But state law does not allow towns to increase Selectboard membership without special legislation, which the approved warrant article did not request.
This means the Selectboard’s membership was improperly expanded, and it calls into question the legality of all actions taken since the spring of 2018. This problem was brought to the board’s attention at its Oct. 1 meeting by Town Counsel Donna MacNicol, who took responsibility for the error because she had reviewed the 2017 Special Town Meeting warrant.
“I basically didn’t believe the [state’s] charter statute applied, because Orange didn’t have a charter,” she explained earlier this month. “Essentially, the truth of the matter is, certain provisions in the charter statute apply whether you have a charter or not. This was one of them. So basically, we’re now trying to correct that mistake.”
Monday’s Special Town Meeting will be held at Orange Town Hall’s Ruth B. Smith Auditorium starting at 7 p.m. There are 23 articles on the warrant, with most pertaining to prior years’ bills, fund transfers and land conveyances.
MacNicol said earlier this month that adoption of Article 22, which asks voters to “authorize the Board of Selectmen to file special legislation for an act to increase the town of Orange Board of Selectmen to a five-member Board of Selectmen,” is a crucial safeguard.
The Selectboard also voted on Oct. 1 to ask Gov. Maura Healey to file a governor’s bill increasing the board from three members to five. Passage of the bill — or adoption of the article — would ratify all actions the board has taken since its first five-member meeting in the spring of 2018 and permit current Selectboard members to fulfill their terms. This remedy would require the state Legislature to then pass that bill by a two-thirds majority.
MacNicol advised earlier this month that legislators have indicated if they can get the “special legislation — if we have to go that route — filed by Oct. 29, then they’re hopeful they can get it done in the session, so that we don’t have to wait until later.”
This error in expanding the Selectboard came to light when Town Clerk Rachael Fortier received a letter from Constable Tim Sakach, who expressed concerns about the process of broadening the Selectboard from three to five members. Sakach is a member of the Orange Citizens Advocacy Group, which had planned to send Healey a letter advocating that she not file a governor’s bill.
“As residents of Orange, we oppose the expansion of our Selectboard through a special act without the explicit authorization of a Town Meeting,” the letter reads. “The 2017 vote did not approve petitioning the Legislature, and many believe that the five-member board has caused inefficiencies and other problems.”
The letter also states that direct special acts — bills introduced in the Massachusetts General Court without a formal home rule petition initiated by Town Meeting — are without precedent for substantive governance changes. They are commonly reserved for minor technical corrections or time-critical emergencies.
“In contrast, expanding a selectboard from three to five,” the letter continues, “is a fundamental change to local government structure — altering decision-making dynamics, quorum rules and representation — which doesn’t qualify as ‘technical’ or ’emergent.’”
Annual Town Meeting date
The final article on the Oct. 27 warrant asks voters if they wish to direct the Selectboard to petition the state Legislature to enact legislation moving the Annual Town Meeting date to the second Monday in May. The current date is the third Monday in June, unless it falls on Juneteenth.
The article is reportedly on the warrant at the recommendation of committees examining potential changes to the regional school district agreement amid Orange’s increasing financial burden.
By holding its Annual Town Meeting in June, Orange is at the mercy of how New Salem, Wendell and Petersham — the other towns in the Ralph C. Mahar Regional School District — vote on the budget and the individual towns’ assessments. Under the current Annual Town Meeting date, Orange is the last of the four to hold its meeting, and achieving a two-thirds majority of the towns ratifies the Mahar budget.
The Mahar School Committee voted in April to approve a 4% budget increase for the current school year despite being repeatedly asked to make more significant cuts in light of Orange’s financial situation. The assessment to Orange increased by 12.8%.
Other articles
Among other articles, Orange voters will be asked in Article 13 to transfer $336,317 from the General Stabilization Fund to cover increasing health insurance costs.
Although Pioneer Valley towns were already facing health insurance increases heading into the start of fiscal year 2026 — a figure that landed at 20% for Orange — and had approved budgets accounting for those increases at their respective Town Meetings, members of the Hampshire County Group Insurance Trust voted on July 30, after the new fiscal year had begun, to increase members’ rates by an additional 20%, effective Oct. 1. The members were informed that the trust was at risk of going bankrupt due to increased pharmaceutical and medical claims and the growing popularity of weight-loss drugs.
Town Administrator Matthew Fortier, updating the Selectboard on health insurance costs in September, put the total fiscal year’s figures at $2.66 million. However, he said, only $2.33 million was budgeted at Annual Town Meeting in June.
The warrant’s first 11 articles involve prior years’ bills.
“I don’t think that any of them are problematic,” said Keith LaRiviere, who chairs the Orange Finance Committee, noting that articles to pay prior years’ bills are often placed on Special Town Meeting warrants.
“What is typically the case is that the bills arrived after the closing of the books for the previous fiscal year,” LaRiviere said. “It happens all the time.”
Other articles involve transferring ownership of property on Cheney Street to the Orange Economic Development and Industrial Corporation, using $10,000 from the Community Development Stabilization Fund to establish a GIS Culvert Mapping Account, setting aside funding for snow removal services and adopting tax exemptions for veterans. The full 23-article warrant can be found at tinyurl.com/STMinOrange.