SHELBURNE FALLS — The West County Senior Services District’s Board of Managers unanimously voted to adopt a $392,955 budget for fiscal year 2027, representing a 3.92% increase in assessments for the three member towns under a new assessment formula.
For FY27, Ashfield’s assessment will be $56,828, a 4.55% decrease from FY26. Buckland will see an assessment of $109,523, a 9.51% increase, and Shelburne will be assessed $304,763, a 3.5% increase.
Board of Managers Chair Sylvia Smith said the town’s assessments are now being calculated using a formula that looks at the five-year average of how much residents of each town use the center, instead of being calculated by how many seniors live in the town or use the center each year. Smith said using a five-year average helps the center look at overall trends, rather than being dramatically swayed by years when residents are more active or years when a higher number of residents die.
“The assessments are based on the usage of the Senior Center by residents 60 years and older,” Smith noted.
According to the new five-year average, the majority of residents served by the center are from Shelburne (45.4%). Buckland residents make up 35.9% of those served and Ashfield residents make up 18.6% of Senior Center users.
Senior Center Director Juli Moreno added that everyone who uses the center is asked to check in using their street address and to provide the town, not the ZIP code. The center also manually checks the data entries once a month to ensure towns are being assessed for the correct residents.
Smith said the remaining $88,192 in the FY27 budget that is not coming from town assessments will come from grants, contracts, donations and the Senior Center Foundation. Increases to the budget cover rising electricity costs, rent for the Senior Center’s space on the first floor of the Masonic Lodge, accounting and insurance costs that the West County Senior Services District has had to pick up since becoming an independent legal entity from the town, and staffing expenses.
For FY27, Smith said the district is giving its staff a 3% raise, and Moreno will be receiving an 8% raise to account for the loss of a contract with the Franklin Regional Transportation Authority, which previously coordinated the transportation of seniors.
“Juli’s doing a lot of work in her responsibilities as the director of the district, but also on the FRTA as the contract is not available at this time,” Smith said.
Moreno said the district is working to get a new contract with the FRTA, but in the meantime, as the district’s transportation coordinator retired last spring, she has picked up a bit more work. She added that the raise helps bring her pay closer what other senior center directors in the region are making.
“I advocated for myself for this as well, because the majority of rural and Franklin County senior center directors make significantly more than me,” Moreno said. “The average is $78,000 to $85,000.”
For FY27, Moreno will receive $73,367 for her work, $53,010 of which will be covered by the town’s assessments and the rest will be covered by grants.
In the coming months, the budget will be presented to the three towns for discussion and inclusion in their own budgets in preparation for voters to review at their respective Annual Town Meetings in the spring.