ORANGE — The will of the people remained the same on Monday, as voters at a Special Town Meeting ratified a decision made eight years ago to add to the Selectboard’s membership.
Residents opted at a 2017 Special Town Meeting to increase Selectboard membership from three to five, and the next election that added new members was held the following spring. But state law does not allow towns to increase Selectboard membership without special legislation, which the approved 2017 warrant article did not request.
This means the Selectboard’s membership was improperly expanded, and an article was placed on Monday’s warrant to ask voters to authorize the board to file special legislation for an act to increase its membership.
“You’re voting to ratify the vote that was taken at the October special meeting in 2017, which increased the board from three to five,” Town Counsel Donna MacNicol told the audience at Orange Town Hall on Monday. “This is a repeat of it. The procedure wasn’t exactly right, and so we’re correcting that procedure. If you don’t vote for this, then we’ll come back again and do it, because it needs to get passed to ratify the actions and ratify the Selectboard.”
MacNicol has taken responsibility for the initial error because she had reviewed the 2017 Special Town Meeting warrant.
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 would ratify all actions the board has taken since its first five-member meeting in the spring of 2018 and permits 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 previously described Article 22 of the 2025 Special Town Meeting warrant as a crucial safeguard in case Healey does not file a governor’s bill.
Denise Andrews, who once represented Orange and neighboring towns in the state House of Representatives, said on Monday that she has a different opinion than MacNicol and advocated for the return to a three-member board.
“A three-person board … has been adopted more by small towns. Reasons given are: it allows the town administrator or town manager to have higher productivity, and less questions or interactions,” she said. “[It] frees up two people to serve on other boards. We always have challenges getting people to serve on the Finance Committee and Capital [Improvement Planning Committee] and some other things.”
Northfield is the only other town in Franklin County with a five-member Selectboard, although Deerfield has considered expanding its three-member board to five.
But Ryan Mailloux, who was on the Selectboard in 2017, said townspeople made their desire known with the Special Town Meeting vote that year.
“There was a lot of dialogue that led to that, and the decisions and actions that have been made by the board and the town as a whole in the last eight years is representative of taxpayers and residents sitting in this room and saying, ‘This is what we want,'” he said. “And I think it’s important that we ratify those actions and votes that took place.”
Mailloux also said Orange faces many obstacles — some unique to the town; others common in this part of the state.
“There’s a lot of challenges that western Mass. communities are facing, and the last thing we need is to take the brainpower capacity down from the five that we have and reduce it to three,” he said. “If anything, we need to be innovative, we need to be solving problems and we need to be creative. All of that is going to be done through a collaborative effort, and that is done from your leadership. And having five members is vital to that.”
Casey Bashaw stepped up to the microphone to echo what Mailloux said.
“It was a body of us that voted it through [in 2017],” he said.
Resident Deb Puppel took issue with the fact that the clerical error was brought to light by a letter sent to Town Clerk Rachael Fortier from Constable Tim Sakach, a member of the Orange Citizens Advocacy Group. The group’s members did not sign the letter but were speaking to the issue on Monday.
“I find that very distasteful, number one,” she said. “Number two, the points that they made in [the letter] …. they show no substantiation for it. And we’ve been told by the town counsel, the town administrator and a former … Selectboard member that was here at the time that vote was taken, that it should be followed through.”
The Orange Citizens Advocacy Group reportedly also planned to send Healey a letter advocating that she not file a governor’s bill.
Annual Town Meeting date
Voters also gave their blessing to the warrant’s final article, which asked if they wish to direct the Selectboard to petition the state Legislature to enact legislation moving Orange’s Annual Town Meeting date to the second Monday in May. The current date is the third Monday in June, unless it falls on Juneteenth.
Selectboard Clerk Andrew Smith explained that having the meeting in June puts Orange at a disadvantage when it comes to having its say in the Ralph C. Mahar Regional School District’s budgeting process. The district’s other towns — Wendell, New Salem and Petersham — have their Annual Town Meetings before Orange does.
Nancy Blackmer, who served as town clerk for 25 years until June 30, mentioned that the date was moved from March to June many years ago in hopes that the town would receive its estimates of state aid and assessments by then.
“That never happened,” she said. “All it has done is make it very difficult for the accountant and the people within the town that have to do the reporting after Town Meeting is over.”
Voters rejected a motion made by resident Ann Reed to amend the proposed article to have the Annual Town Meeting on the second Saturday in May instead of the second Monday in May. Reed had argued that Saturday is more accommodating to the town’s older population, with some residents avoiding driving to a meeting that they know will conclude after dark when visibility is low.
Finance Committee member Kathy Reinig mentioned that the second Saturday in May is the day before Mother’s Day, meaning holding a meeting then could conflict with family plans. George Willard made the point that altering the date does not change the fact that the meeting is still likely to conclude after dark. Moderator Steven Garrity later mentioned the time can be set as deemed fit.
Resident Christine Goody took to the microphone to say she was speaking for religious Jews and her fellow Seventh-day Adventists, who celebrate the Sabbath on Saturdays as opposed to Sundays.
“I would not be participating in a Town Meeting on the Sabbath day, Saturday,” she said.
Other articles
Voters also adopted an article transferring $336,317 from the General Stabilization Fund to cover increasing health insurance costs.
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. However, Hampshire County Group Insurance Trust members 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.
The Selectboard earlier this month authorized Town Administrator Matthew Fortier to explore the possibility of Orange joining the state-offered health insurance program for the next fiscal year, along with other options to save money amid rising costs. The Group Insurance Commission is a quasi-independent state agency governed by 17 members to provide and administer health insurance and other benefits to the state’s employees and retirees, as well as their dependents and survivors.
With the increase, Fortier put the total fiscal year’s figures at $2.66 million, though only $2.33 million was budgeted at Annual Town Meeting in June, prompting the town to transfer $336,317 from the General Stabilization Fund to make up the difference.
Voters also adopted the warrant’s first 11 articles, which involved prior years’ bills and were passed as one consolidated motion approved by consent.
In Article 14, voters agreed to transfer $10,000 from the Community Development Stabilization Fund to establish the GIS Culvert Mapping Account. Fortier explained the town has run out of money to map all of its 1,100 culverts. He said the Community Development Stabilization Fund holds money generated through the cannabis excise tax.
At the recommendation of Airport Commission member Julie Cole, residents took no action on an article that would transfer money to a purchased-services account line item.
The Ruth B. Smith Auditorium was filled with 137 registered voters. Quorum is 75.
The full 23-article warrant can be found at tinyurl.com/STMinOrange.