The Wellesley Select Board recently came to consensus about splitting the school budget from the town’s overall spending plan, ending a decades-long practice of consolidating Wellesley’s municipal finances into a single budget.
Town Meeting member Michael Tobin proposed the separation at this past spring’s Annual Town Meeting. “This motion is a necessary step,” he said, “toward responsible governance and fiscal transparency.”
While some Town Meeting members look forward to more accessible and digestible information about Wellesley’s budgets when Annual Town Meeting begins on March 3, others in town are wary of possible repercussions.
The FY26 school budget is $94,035,026, just over 44% of the town’s overall spending plan.
Town Meeting members for years have been forced to wait until after all town department and School Committee presentations to debate and vote on the entire budget, a process that can take more than one session.
The school budget is often presented last. If a department item is an issue, a Town Meeting member would need to recall it and refresh the group’s memory.
Tobin said a dedicated motion for school finances would help members stay organized and lead to better debates. “I expect and hope we’re gonna have better conversations and debates in Town Meetings,” he said, “It’ll be richer conversation … and I think it’s gonna lead to a better outcome.”
Katherine Babson proposed the omnibus budget at Town Meeting in 1986. She initially opposed splitting the budget, but describes herself as “agnostic” about the change. She said she would fight any effort to break down the budget further.
Before 1986,Town Meeting members reviewed as many as 80 separate articles for individual departments. “It went on forever,” Babson said, and in the end, when the voting body got to the last few articles, no one was listening.
School Committee Chair Niki Ofenloch and former chair Linda Chow attempted to safeguard the omnibus budget’s original intent.
They argued that the omnibus budget has continued to provide a clear representation of school costs. Chow said the School Committee worked hard to sift through and vet the school system’s 426-page budget.
“We talk a lot about … ‘One Wellesley’ and wanting to approach things with a whole community focus,” said Ofenloch, “and I think that dividing the motions … siloes the schools from the rest of the town.”
Chow said splitting the budgets may have severe, unintended consequences when uncertainty around school funding continues to swirl. “What message is the Select Board sending by creating this separation?” she asked.
During a Sept. 30 meeting about preparation for the 2027 fiscal year, the board confirmed it would be moving forward with the split. Select Board Chair Marjorie Freiman said Town Meeting members wanted “more clarity on how the [school’s] numbers are derived” and to “fully and fairly reflect the cost of schools.”
The change may create logistical problems, Chow said. What would happen, for example, if one budget passes and the other doesn’t?
“If there’s cuts, for some reason, there’s dates … built into the contract by which we need to notify staff members,” she said. “And if we don’t have a balanced budget by any of those dates … in theory, then we don’t have any money past June 30 by which to pay our staff.”
Select Board members presented four options for handling unbalanced budgets: requiring the School Committee to prepare a list of potential cuts, drawing on free cash reserves, voting down the town budget, or overriding it.
Vice Chair Tom Ulfelder told the board the School Committee needs to actively participate in developing the budget from the beginning.
Many people don’t understand the “extraordinary complexity of educating children in the public school system in Massachusetts today,” Ulfelder said, so they cannot comprehend why the costs are increasing while enrollment is decreasing.
Some members of the community still view school as simply reading, writing, and arithmetic, he said. “It’s not just the requirements under special education,” he said, “but it’s the impact of COVID, it’s the social emotional learning, it’s the impact of so many factors that are affecting these children in their safe and healthy development.”
Wellesley’s foray into splitting the budgets has attracted attention from other regional elected officials. Natick Select Board Chair Bruce Evans said he’ll be monitoring the change. Most Massachusetts municipalities use combined budgets.
Evans said there’s a fine line between information overload and the concise information that people are looking for, and Natick is still finding the balance. “I’ll be curious to see how it plays out,” he said.
Babson, the architect of the combined budget in Wellesley, suggested the revised approach to finances may make it easier for new Town Meeting members.“Older Town Meeting members have been through it a million times,” she said, “while new Town Meeting members might not know … when to say or how to express their questions.”
Transparency in the budgeting process, she said, is a reasonable desire. “Maybe we need to do a better job of educating everybody.”