NORTHFIELD — Local towns are continuing to earn praise for their annual town reports, with Northfield earning first place in the Massachusetts Municipal Association’s 2026 town report contest for populations under 5,000.
Massachusetts state law requires towns to publish a town report each year in advance of Annual Town Meetings. The town report includes financial information, election results, department accomplishments and Town Meeting information. Northfield’s fiscal year 2026 report, beginning with budget information, includes more than 200 pages.
According to the Massachusetts Municipal Association’s website, the contest recognizes outstanding reports based on criteria that include visual appeal; material arrangement; presentation of statistics and data; summary of the year’s achievements; evidence of local planning for the future; and the report’s practical utility. Two judges select first-, second- and third-place winners in each of four population categories: less than 5,000, 5,000 to 15,000, 15,001 to 30,000, and 30,001-plus. Winners are recognized and given a plaque during the association’s annual conference each January.
Northfield’s victory comes on the heels of Leyden and Phillipston, also with populations under 5,000, being recognized for their town reports in 2025. Leyden earned second place and Phillipston came in third.
Town Administrator Andrea Llamas shared her excitement over Northfield’s win.
“I felt that it was a great recognition for everybody,” she said. “It was a change for all the staff in the way we had been doing this reporting, and I was really, really pleased to see everybody take it on.”
Northfield worked with consultants to put together its initial rendition of the report template after receiving a grant from the Community Compact Best Practice Program. Since then, the town has been able to use that template, adjusting it with relevant information each year.
“The consultants were very good about working with anybody in the departments who had a question on, ‘Well, what does this mean, why are we doing this, what’s this?’” Llamas recounted. “They helped us put it together and left us with the template so that we would be able to then recreate it each year going forward.”
Northfield Town Clerk Amanda Hall highlighted the layout and organization of the FY26 report, saying it “looks really nice.”
“I think it’s great. It shows all of the hard work that we are doing to really get information out to the residents in the best way possible,” she said.
Llamas highlighted the two “spotlight” sections of the report, which showcased the work of the Community Preservation Committee, a nine-member committee that reviews Community Preservation Act funding proposals and makes recommendations on which projects should be awarded funding at Town Meeting; and the overlay account, described in the report as “a key component of municipal finance that is designed to fund abatements and exemptions of committed real and personal property taxes.”
“[It’s] kind of to flag two things that are vital to the town, but aren’t always easily understood because they sit just a little bit outside of the standard department budget process,” Llamas explained.
In the future, Llamas said she is hoping to use the spotlight sections to highlight the work of the town clerk and the town moderator.
Northfield has already begun working on the next town report. Hall noted that in her department’s section, she is hoping to speak more about Assistant Town Clerk Dan Campbell as he plans to retire.
Llamas hopes that residents will take advantage of the annual town report to answer any questions they may have about departments or budgets.
“I hope that people are appreciative of the fact that everybody in town, working in town, is doing the work to put this together for them,” Llamas said. “It is a resource, not just forward but backward, and a record of the happenings in town. So I’m hopeful that residents will discover it more and more, and find it more and more useful.”