The Springfield Tax Committee voted unanimously to recommend that the City Council adopt the maximum allowable residential tax shift and asked the mayor to contribute an additional $2 million toward tax relief, the committee chair said.

Tim Allen, chair of the city finance committee, said the committee's five voting memberswhich include a Board of Assessors representative, a citizen voting member, the regional chamber representative and an academic economistagreed the "max shift" best limits homeowners' immediate tax increases while keeping decisions about mayoral contributions and other offsets open as the council prepares to vote Monday.

The recommendation follows a presentation from Jessica of the Board of Assessors that showed how assessed values and new growth feed into the levy. "If we were to vote on a single tax rate... that rate for residential and commercial industrial personal property would be $19.84," Jessica said during the presentation, and she explained that the residential tax factor is the legal mechanism the council uses to move burden between residential and commercial classes, with a statutory maximum shift of 1.75.

Why it matters: Springfield approved an FY26 budget that staff said is 6.1% larger than the previous year, a $56 million increase driven largely by schools and nondiscretionary costs. Kathy Bono Capo, the city's chief administrative and financial officer, told the committee $51 million of that increase is for nondiscretionary items such as school spending, pensions and benefits, leaving relatively little discretionary budget to cut. The administration certified $18 million in "free cash" minutes before the meeting and has already applied about $4 million in offsets to the levy this yearroughly $2 million from T‑bill interest and $2 million returned from a pension reservereducing the average homeowner's increase from an estimated $348 to about $288 at the proposed max shift.

Committee discussion centered on trade-offs between further using free cash and protecting long-term pension funding. Councilor Tracy Whitfield argued for keeping the tax factor at the max shift and for asking the mayor to match last year's level of mayoral tax relief, which the committee quantified as an additional $2 million in this request. "I am going to go with the max shift line, and I'm also going to ask that we ask the mayor to keep the amount of investment that he invested last year at the $6,000,000," Whitfield said.

The committee also reviewed exemptions and targeted relief options: Jessica reviewed state-authorized exemptions (clauses 41C, 17D and 37), recent increases in exemption amounts for some seniors and veterans, and a proposed donation-supported targeted tax relief fund tied to a home-rule petition the mayor previously supported.

Formal action: The committee recorded a 5-0 recommendation in favor of the residential-factor approach at the statutory maximum shift and in support of asking the mayor for an additional $2 million to apply to tax relief. Voting members recorded support were Tim Allen (chair), Jessica (Board of Assessors), Ruth Ann (citizen voting member), Diana Zaino (Springfield Regional Chamber) and Mark Howard (economist, Springfield College).

Next steps: Committee leaders said they will meet with the mayor to seek his commitment to the additional funds and will notify councilors of any agreement before the City Council meeting Monday, when the council will consider the recommended rates (public comment begins at 4:30 p.m.; council vote at 5:00 p.m.).