Easton leaders recommend $7.3 million override to close budget gap; question headed to voters

Town Administrator Connor Reid said at a joint public hearing that Easton faces a structural budget gap that cannot be closed without additional recurring revenue and recommended a $7.3 million operating override to avert deeper cuts to services and schools. "Eighty-five percent of our operating budgets are our people," Reid said, adding that rapid increases in fixed costs — especially health insurance and regional education assessments — and low state education aid have combined to push the town into an unusually large shortfall.

Reid said the town's early-year, preliminary shortfall totaled about $6,360,000 before months of reductions and use of reserves. The administration reduced that gap in planning but said balancing without additional recurring revenue would require the largest cuts to town and school services since the 2008 recession, including more than 50 municipal full-time-equivalent position eliminations and hundreds of school staff reductions.

"Fixed costs are expenditures over which the town has little to no immediate control," Finance Director Wendy Nightingale said in the presentation, describing rapid increases to Group Insurance Commission premiums, pension assessments and regional school assessments. Nightingale said some GIC health plans rose as much as 17.2% this year and that health insurance increases alone accounted for roughly $2 million in two years.

The administration and department heads walked through how those increases translated into service reductions under the non-override budget. Dr. Alicia Cabral, Superintendent of the Easton Public Schools, said the school department initially faced an 8.2% level-service ask that was reduced through attrition, incentives and other measures to a $51.5…