ORANGE — Eighty-seven Annual Town Meeting voters overwhelmingly rejected Orange’s fiscal year 2027 assessment to the Ralph C. Mahar Regional School District on Monday, in hopes that the $5.2 million figure might be reduced by $200,000.
The Finance Committee had recommended voting against the assessment, and it takes just one more member town defeating the school budget to send it back to the School Committee for reconsideration.
“When we began working on the budget this year, we … on the Finance Committee decided that we wanted to take care of the operation of the town first and then set aside as much money as we could reasonably afford to pay for education,” Keith LaRiviere, who chairs the Finance Committee, told voters gathered in Town Hall’s Ruth B. Smith Auditorium. “So the reason we’re asking for a ‘no’ vote … is that we are hoping that the Regional School Committee will vote to further reduce their assessment to the town. We’re hoping for a reduction of $200,000.”
New Salem voted on Monday to adopt a $577,101 assessment. Wendell’s Annual Town Meeting is slated for May 30 and Petersham is scheduled to meet on June 1.
LaRiviere added that he and his colleagues feel paying a $5 million assessment should be sufficient, and Finance Committee member Kathy Reinig said committee members feel that the extra $200,000 is needed for non-school operations in town. Peter Cross, who chairs the Mahar School Committee, made a motion at Monday’s meeting to add $200,000 to this $5 million budget line item, though it was rejected by voters.
Christopher Woodcock, who chairs the ad hoc committee the Selectboard has tasked with making recommendations to help rein in the Mahar budget, stood up in an individual capacity to advocate for a rejection of the assessment article.
“As I see it, a ‘no’ vote will help us strike the right balance between paying an affordable amount for education at Mahar and ensuring the town can adequately fund police and fire protection, roads and infrastructure, and other essential municipal services,” he said. “The town of Orange, the Mahar district’s primary funding partner, is in a difficult financial situation. Orange is the least wealthy community in the district and thus has the least ability to pay for education.
“But because the district’s assessment formula is based on each member town’s student foundation enrollment, typically we are responsible for 75% to 80% of Mahar’s apportioned costs,” he added. “This inequity in the assessment formula is compounded by the level of discretionary spending in the budget.”
Woodcock also mentioned that Mahar has nearly $1.5 million available in various reserve and stabilization accounts, including nearly $1.2 million in the School Choice reserve account. He said he has not heard a convincing argument as to why so much money is needed in reserve or how the quality of education would suffer if $250,000 from the School Choice reserve fund were to be used to reduce Orange’s assessment to the $5 million recommended by the Finance Committee.
But Amber Dupell, of the Mahar School Committee, took to the microphone to say she disapproves of people using this tactic.
“Someday I’m going to stand up here and be really proud of how well we all work together. Today’s not that day — but someday it will happen,” she said. “I feel it is drastically inappropriate for us as a town to point out reserve funds that our schools have and expect them to use them all, when they are one-time revenues.”
Shortly after the assessment vote, residents adopted a $29 million budget that included $14.2 million for education. This constitutes $8.6 million for elementary school education, $5 million for Mahar and $590,820 for Franklin County Technical School.
The budget also includes an additional $2,355 that Collector Shana Smith requested to increase her salary to $65,000. She said her office is historically underpaid and, when hired, she accepted $3,000 less than offered to help it run more smoothly.
Resident Ann Reed, who referred to herself as a “penny-pincher,” advocated for Smith’s request.
“I do not wish for us to lose high-energy people at Town Hall, and we’ve lost an awful lot of people,” she said, adding that the increase is “not much of a bump.”
Voters also adopted Article 17, to appropriate $70,000 for the purchase of a police cruiser, and Article 18, to transfer $58,601 from free cash to cover the fourth of five payments for the purchase of Tasers, body-worn cameras and cruiser-mounted cameras for the Police Department. Both requests are part of the FY27 capital plan.
They also agreed to appropriate up to $90,000 to replace the protective clothing of 15 firefighters, likewise approved by the capital plan. The equipment was reportedly issued as part of a department-wide outfitting in 2016 and is approaching the end of its service life, as defined by national and state regulations.
Residents likewise agreed to appropriate $35,000 to buy a tractor for use in the municipal cemetery. This, too, was approved in the capital plan, as is the purchase in Article 21: a skid steer for use by the Sewer Department, which entails allocating $65,000.
However, voters rejected a town bylaw amendment pertaining to noncriminal dispositions and fines connected to a property owner’s duty to remove ice, snow, tree limbs and other debris from sidewalks.
Special Town Meeting
The Annual Town Meeting was preceded by a Special Town Meeting in which voters adopted all 10 articles.
Among the requests, Article 3 asked voters to transfer $150,000 from free cash to the snow and ice account to cover a deficit, while adoption of Article 7 allows the transfer of $450,000 from Sewer Enterprise Retained Earnings to defray the Sewer Enterprise Fund emergency deficit related to the sinkhole that opened on East Main Street in June 2025.
The annual report was dedicated to longtime public servants Karl C. Bittenbender, who died in November, and James E. Cornwell, who died in February.
