carole.plumb@waylandpost.org
Per Wayland’s Chapter 19-4 bylaw, the school budget is due Dec. 15 to the town manager. But as of press time, a budget lacking the final school numbers has yet to be presented to the Finance Committee.
Regarding the budget deliberations at their Jan. 28 meeting, FinCom still did not “have a proposed [omnibus] budget in hand at this time…We’re expecting it by the end of this week,” according to FinCom Chair Phil Giudice.
“I feel strongly on this,” former Finance Committee Chair Pam Roman said during the Jan. 5 Finance Committee meeting. “We rewrote the code last year, and Department Budgets are due to the town manager on Dec. 15, a preliminary budget, [an] operating budget, is due to the finance committee by the end of the calendar year.”
Town Manager Michael McCall organized a budget working group over the summer to create preliminary department budgets. Departments were asked to develop level service and where possible level funded budgets. He asked for no cost of living increases, and instituted a hiring freeze in anticipation of avoiding a potential override.
McCall sent FinCom a preliminary budget on Dec. 31 with the numbers they had to date, which did not include all the school numbers.
“The [Dec. 31] preliminary budget includes the school budget, and it’s a 5.5% [proposed increase] number in there,” Giudice said. “The town budget is one and a half percent, a quarter the magnitude… and so there’s work between town and the school to say what’s feasible.”
Roman, after describing FinCom’s budget review process, pointed out that ”typically, we are starting the whole budget review in [the end of] January, and if we’re losing January, we’re just shortening our window.”
“You can’t kind of focus on both,” member William Huss noted. “We haven’t really done much budgeting yet, and yet the budgeting is being discussed at the same time we’re doing the articles.”
Roman further noted that “FinCom is charged with presenting a budget, and if we’re not doing our work to review and vet that budget and have, you know, have some Q&A and really feel comfortable with… the department numbers, if we’re getting pushed, we’re into February, and then we’ve got a month and a half to do all these [52] articles and complete the budget, and then sometimes we have a lot of questions, and they don’t get answered at the next meeting, and it goes two meetings and we still don’t get all those questions answered, or new questions come up and there’s not time to do the next round of questions. We haven’t really done our job effectively. So that’s my concern.”
FinCom will hold open Mondays and Wednesdays in February to accommodate budget presentations and discussions with the School, Capital Improvement Planning Committee and the town manager.
Final numbers on anticipated healthcare cost increases, carried in the unclassified budget for both town and schools, are expected by mid-February. FinCom article commentfs are due by March 16, after which no further changes can be made.
At the Feb. 2 School Committee meeting, Superintendent David Fleishman presented his recommended school tax levy budget of $57.72 million, an increase of $2.74 million, a 4.98% increase over FY26.
Chapter 70 funding
The state education Chapter 70 funding for Wayland was posted Jan. 28 for fiscal year 2027.
This first preliminary Cherry Sheet, so named for the color paper they used to be printed on, shows the amount of funding that will be allotted to towns and cities by the state as proposed in Gov. Maura Healy’s budget.
The overall state Chapter 70 funding proposal was set at $7.60 billion, a $242 million (3.2%) increase over FY26. The total state aid for education is expected to increase by 3.6% to $6.90 billion.
The town tentatively expects to receive $8.15 million in Chapter 70 funding, up $200,700 over the FY26 budget. Finance Director Brian Keveny was budgeting for a $250,000 increase and hoping for $300,000. In FY26, the increase was $405,000.
In practice, the Division of Local Services (DLS) releases multiple “preliminary” snapshot Cherry Sheets through the budget season. After the governor’s budget in January, prelims based on the House budget arrive in early May to late June for the conference committee/legislature-enacted budget, and then updates again after the governor signs the General Appropriations Act. If the governor signs with line-item vetoes and the legislature overrides the vetoes, the cherry sheet updates again in the fall.
Towns commonly pass their annual budgets in the May-June time frame before the state budget is final. As a result, towns plan with contingencies — using reserves, avoiding one-time revenues for ongoing costs, and adjusting later during tax-rate setting — knowing that final state aid and assessments may not be confirmed until well into the fiscal year.
