Southborough Youth Commission backs FY27 budget request; director reports on Winter Wishes and community needs assessment

The Southborough Youth Commission unanimously voted December 9 to support the department's draft FY27 budget request to town administration and discussed program updates including Winter Wishes and a multi-town "Shop with a Cop" program.

During a nearly hour-long director's report, the department director summarized a recent community needs assessment and said she had provided a high-level briefing to the select board and expected follow-up conversations on possible task forces and collaborative next steps. "We gave a high level overview of the sort of big picture points" and asked the select board to consider options that require "little to no spending," the director said, noting the difficulty of addressing issues such as housing without cross-agency cooperation.

Members also discussed philanthropy and program delivery. The director described Winter Wishes distribution and said the office began supplying gift cards to families the previous Friday. "We have raised over $17,000 for Winter Wishes," a Friends representative said during the meeting, a total participants said met the year's goal and will allow some funds to be earmarked for camp scholarships.

The commission heard details about Shop with a Cop, a program that pairs officers and eligible children for supervised shopping at a local retailer. The director said participating communities typically set aside about $50 per child and that Southborough eligibility aligns with Winter Wishes recipients.

On budget matters, the director walked through the FY27 draft request prepared for submittal to town finance. She said the personnel board directed a 5% salary line to cover merit and cost-of-living adjustments and that a planned software increase reflects a new Propio interpretation feature by which residents can initiate calls with interpretation support. "Propio has a new feature now where residents can initiate a phone call to the town, with interpretation support, which is a huge, very beneficial change," she said. The department said that although some line items increase, the net budget request shows an overall decrease of about 4.6% compared with the prior year when all line items are considered.

After discussion, the commission took an official vote. Commission members Lauren Ritchie, Melissa Shields, Susan Beyer, Sarah Mikas, Karen Englund and Nancy Sutton recorded "Aye" on a roll call, approving the draft FY27 request to be submitted to town administration.

The commission also agreed to continue administering the Ellen Piantic scholarship process: Friends will fund the $1,000 award and the youth commission will review anonymized essays and select the recipient. "We make it as blind a process as we can," the director said, and multiple members volunteered to participate in the essay reviews.

The meeting closed with discussion of recruitment strategies for a vacant commission seat. Members proposed posting the vacancy on high-traffic local Facebook groups, distributing flyers at preschools and neighborhood bulletin boards, and hosting a joint open house with Friends and Youth & Family Services at a nearby arts/history center or Theracopia. Sam Stivers offered to send the commission a town census spreadsheet that lists residents' occupations to support targeted outreach.

The Commission adjourned after a unanimous roll-call vote. The group confirmed that regular meetings continue to meet on the second Tuesday of each month, with the next scheduled in January.