With the $2.5 million override failing to pass at last week’s town election, Marblehead will now be forced to use a reduced-services budget for the upcoming fiscal year, which will have varying implications across town.
At the election, Question 1, containing the override, was voted down by a 3,399 to 2,992 margin. A number of departments will now be operating with fewer resources and/or a redistributed budget starting July 1.
In an interview with Town Administrator Thatcher Kezer after the election, he said that despite the override not passing, the town will have a “workable budget,” but that the cuts will affect the town and school system in different ways.
“It’s tight on the town side, it’s causing staffing layoffs on the school side,” Kezer said.
The following is a breakdown of how the reduced services budget will affect different departments town-wide:
Education and Athletics
Marblehead Public Schools’ budget made up just under 50% of the total proposed override at $1,134,517. As a result, the school system will be hit the hardest for FY24, with 33 positions being cut across the five schools that make up the district.
At the High School, one science teacher and one world-language teacher position will be cut.
Paraprofessionals in the library and science department will also be eliminated, in addition to a building substitute and a special education position. These cuts will result in a smaller amount of sections or classes, which will increase class size and have impacts on supervision, special-education case loads, and services offered to students and teachers.
Chemistry, math, and English staff positions that were not filled in the 2022-23 school year will also be lost.
The ramifications will also be felt on the athletic fields starting this fall. All freshman coaching positions will be axed, which will result in the elimination of freshman athletics entirely. Football, boys and girls soccer, field hockey, volleyball, boys and girls basketball, and baseball will not field freshman teams. In turn, this will heavily impact and limit freshman students’ ability to participate in athletics at the high-school level.
At Veterans Middle School, the school-librarian position will be eliminated, disrupting curriculum development, the reading needs of students, the summer reading list, and management of online resources.
In the schools’ FY24 public budget hearing presentation in March, it was reported that more than 1,500 books had been taken out of the school’s library.
A world-language position will also be removed from Veterans Middle School, eliminating Latin curriculum altogether and increasing Spanish and French class sizes that could lead to 25 or more students per class.
The Village School will lose two classroom teachers, two lunch paraprofessionals, and special education paraprofessionals. In addition, the physical-education and music-teacher positions will be unfilled.
A special-education teacher/case manager, tutor position, and lunch/recess paraprofessionals will be lost at the Brown School. This will decrease supervision, support, and instruction for elementary-school students there.
The loss of a secretary at Glover Elementary will result in a delay in ordering processes for the building and backups or delays in communication with families. In addition, more lunch/recess paraprofessional positions will be cut, as well as another tutor.
Emergency Response
The Police Department’s reduced budget comes in at $4,722,556, which is just under a $50,000 cut from FY23. The override would have provided an additional $196,773 in funding. Under the reduced-services budget, despite overtime pay cuts, roughly $4.5 million will be taken up by salaries.
Despite this, Marblehead Police Chief Dennis King said at a Select Board and Finance Committee joint budget hearing in March that the department will be able to still provide quality service, but that some additional work may be hindered.
“Extra patrols, investigative overtime, training overtime, major-events overtime, and the like, that will all be… part of the reductions,” King said. “That means that we still provide the service, but it might lessen the ability to do enhanced [work] in any of those areas I just identified.”
Funding will be reduced for two vacant positions, bringing total salaries down by $46,903 from FY23.
For the Fire Department, the budget now totals $5,203,241, which increased from 2023 by $175,896. The failed override would have provided $216,480 to the department for level funding. Fire Chief Jason Gilliland did not fill three firefighter positions last year, therefore those positions will be cut, without layoffs, to allow for a balanced budget, leaving a staff total of 39.
At the budget hearing, Gilliland said the department is understaffed, but with overtime funding, will be able to meet staffing standards per shift.
“What the overtime does is give me flexibility because we run full staffing as 10 firefighters per shift, we can run it down to nine,” he said. “With the overtime, I’m still going to run down to that minimum staff and be able to potentially keep Franklin Street open if something happens. We’re not going to suffer because, again, we will keep that staffing per shift where it should be.”
Municipal
A number of municipal departments are being forced to make significant cuts. The Building Inspection Department, which inspects, permits, and maintains the town’s facilities, will see $71,294 in cuts for FY24.
The Council on Aging will cut $25,747 from its budget, including $17,747 in salaries.
The Department of Public Works, which consists of the Highway Department, Tree Department, and Drain Department, will make $74,241 in cuts, $63,282 of which is in salaries and the remaining $10,959 is in other expenses.
There is no question that budgets will be tighter in the town for the upcoming fiscal year. However, Kezer stated that, with the exception of the schools, the reduced-services budget for FY24 won’t be extremely noticeable.
Some are now wondering if the town will find itself in the same situation for FY25 in terms of needing an override to help address a deficit, which Kezer explained will grow each year the spending imbalance is not addressed.
“The challenge for the following year is that the structural deficit will just grow even larger,” Kezer said.
For now, Marbleheaders will have to wait and see how the upcoming fiscal year plays out, and the way in which the spending imbalance will affect future budgets.