ORANGE — The town administrator intends to tally what certain salary percentage increases would look like for department heads and present those numbers to the Selectboard during its scheduled Dec. 18 meeting.

Matthew Fortier addressed board members at this week’s meeting and discussed non-contract employee and department salaries, mentioning he has requested that department heads submit their fiscal year 2026 budget requests by Feb. 7. He asked board members for direction on the base wage increase, if any, they want to offer employees who are not part of a union or who otherwise don’t have a contract. Fortier explained increases of various amounts were approved at the 2023 Annual Town Meeting.

“For this year we’ve determined in early revenue estimates that the revenue increase overall will be around 2% year over year,” he told Selectboard members. “That being said, we also have union contracts and, including the schools, typically the union increases are around 3% base wage.”

Fortier said the 2023 Annual Town Meeting grew emotional because some employees got big raises and others got smaller ones.

“For the sake of time, across the board is the easiest thing to do, of course,” he said.

Selectboard Vice Chair Pat Lussier said she feels the town “made good progress last year.”

“I think we really did as good of a job as we could possibly do to bring people more in line with surrounding towns and so forth,” she said. “I think in the interest, though, of being fiscally responsible, if we know that our revenues are only expected to increase by 2%, I have a feeling that the taxpayers might expect us to hold to what we think our budget is going to be, and not keep relying on free cash to keep the spending going.”

Chair Tom Smith said he is content with 3% raises.

“We can’t keep doing 2% and keep employees. It’s not going to happen. We all know that,” Smith said. “We can’t keep doing this.”

Reach Domenic Poli at: dpoli@recorder.com or 413-930-4120.