SUNDERLAND — To prepare for a likely override ahead of the April 24 Annual Town Meeting, the Selectboard and Finance Committee are asking town departments to prepare separate budgets reduced by 5% and 20% from their fiscal year 2026 budgets.
At their next joint meeting on March 24, the Selectboard and Finance Committee members plan on reviewing these decreased budget drafts to settle on a percentage for the override. The level of reduction that will take effect hinges on the results of the override.
“I don’t know if we’re going to be able to keep this town running if we don’t pass an override,” Selectboard Chair Nathaniel Waring stressed. “All of this is, do we have a town or do we not have a town? Do we have a municipal government that functions or do we not?”
An initial draft of the FY27 budget included a $1.5 million increase, largely due to projected jumps in the Sunderland Elementary School budget and the town’s shares of the Frontier Regional School District and South County Senior Center budgets.
The draft budget for Sunderland Elementary School that Frontier Regional and Union 38 school districts’ Director of Business Administration Shelley Poreda presented at Tuesday’s School Committee meeting included a roughly 10% increase over FY26, bringing the general fund budget to about $4 million. Initially, the School Committee had considered a 18.3% increase, but the Selectboard and Finance Committee informed School Committee Chair Jessica Corwin that the town would struggle to fund such an increase.
In an email last week, Poreda said “natural budget increases to maintain level services and programs,” along with higher costs for special education placement outside the district, grant changes and the addition of two new instructional assistants led to this growth.
Meanwhile, on March 5, the Frontier Regional School District School Committee approved a $13.76 million budget for FY27, a 3.63% jump of $482,460 over the current fiscal year, largely due to increases in health insurance costs. Sunderland will pay about $2.8 million to Frontier, up $211,527 from FY26. Of the district’s four member towns, Sunderland is facing the highest increase, with Deerfield falling closest behind at a $94,714 increase.
According to Finance Committee member Dylan Korpita, rising enrollment largely accounted for Frontier’s increase. According to Poreda, while enrollment dropped in Conway and Deerfield and remained the same in Whately, per data from October 2025, eight more Sunderland students enrolled at Frontier Regional School, raising the town’s required contribution for the budget.
Meanwhile, Sunderland’s share of the South County Senior Center’s operating budget request came to $125,751, according to Senior Center Director Jennifer Ferrara. The ask marks a $72,889 increase from the request that came before voters at last year’s Annual Town Meeting as the Senior Center Board of Oversight considers renting a new space at 112 Amherst Road.
Without the override, the town would be able to raise property taxes by 2.5% plus about $180,000, the new potential for levy capacity based on $36,770 of new growth.
To prepare for a likely override, Selectboard and Finance Committee members decided to ask departments to craft a budget with a 5% decrease from their FY26 figures on Monday night. In addition, to prepare for the possibility of residents voting down an override, the Selectboard and Finance Committee are also asking departments to prepare a budget with a 20% decrease from FY26.
“It’s scary, but it’s probably not even enough,” Finance Committee Chair Valerie Voorheis said of the 20% drop.
Selectboard member Christyl Drake-Tremblay mentioned reduced hours at the Sunderland Public Library and the Department of Public Works no longer shoveling sidewalks as potential services the departments may include as cuts to achieve a 20% decrease.
“Even if we reduce the library by half, that doesn’t solve the problem,” Drake-Tremblay said.
“We can talk about not shoveling the sidewalks, but that’s not going to do anything to the overall budget decrease,” Finance Committee member Ian Raphael said. Referring to the override, he added, “We have to present a good argument.”