Annual Town Election - Sat, April 26

3 Budgets

WHY do we have 3 Budgets this year?

Typically, the town presents a single budget to Town Meeting each spring. With the looming cuts to services if we were to not pass an override, the town departments and boards worked to present 3 options to Town Meeting, one, a "1% budget" that fits within our current levy (tax) limit, but would result in significant cuts to various town and school services, a second budget that would provider closer to Level Service Budget and require passage of a $4 Million override, and a third which would require passage of a $6.5 Million override. We the Town ultimately decide what kind of Town we want Norton to be! Read on to find out more.

"1%" budget

WITHOUT AN OVERRIDE

Finance Committee Recommended 1% Option for FY25:

$73,454,128.00

This budget won't be able to provide even a level service budget, and important services would be affected, including the School Department, Fire and Police Departments, new Senior Center, and others.

This budget also required the use of $1.2 Million of "free cash" from our savings account and $1 Million dollars from our Ambulance Receipt accounts, both of which are intended to be used for non-recurring expenses like capital, etc. Otherwise, the cuts would have been even greater.

"4 MILLION OVERRIDE" BUDGET

Finance Committee Recommended "4M override" option for FY25:

$76,193,911.11

This budget requires a 4M override, does not need to use any "Free Cash" and provide these benefits to our town, restoring services for some departments, but not all (particularly School department):

Police Department fully funded
Fire department fully funded
Library fully funded
Parks & Rec fully funded
Veterans fully funded
Public Health Nurse mostly funded
Highway department mostly funded
Council on Aging mostly funded
School department $1.75M shortfall

"6.5 MILLION OVERRIDE" budget

Finance Committee Recommended "6.5M override" option for FY25:

$78,520,369.92

This budget requires a 6.5M override and provides level services. In addition to not using any Free Cash, it also uses $150,000 less in Ambulance Receipts.

This provides the needed room within the budget and levy limits for future years.

Budget-wise, it provides these benefits:

All $4M plus
EMS fully funded
Schools fully funded
Council on Aging fully funded
Animal Control fully funded
Board of Health fully funded
Public Health Nurse fully funded
Highway department fully funded
Addition of DPW Director
Addition to Parks & Rec

Town Meeting Warrant with Finance Committee Recommendations

WE GET TO DECIDE WHAT KIND OF TOWN WE WANT NORTON TO BE

At the Town Meeting on May 28th, 3 budgets -- the "1%" budget and two "override" budget options -- were presented, and each passed.

The Select Board then voted to schedule a Special Election for Saturday, July 13 from 8am - 5pm at the Norton Middle School.

All registered voters are asked to vote on these questions:

Question 1A would increase our levy limit by $4M and fund the $4M budget passed at Town Meeting.
Question 1B would increase our levy limit by $6.5M and fund the $6.5M budget passed at Town Meeting.

Everyone For Norton encourages voting YES on both 1A and 1B.

If neither passes, we will be left with the default 1% budget.

Learn more about how and where to vote and what the ballot will look like

Voter Information

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