Westborough approves FY26 budget after extended school funding fight

Westborough voters approved the Advisory Finance Committee’s recommended FY26 budget after a full day of presentations and several hours of public deliberation. The meeting opened with the Advisory Finance Committee chair, Walter Leslie, and Town Manager Christie Williams laying out the FY26 revenues, reserves and the AFC-recommended budget. The AFC presented revised figures reflecting a recent clerical union contract and the committee’s recommended cuts.

The town’s overview emphasized a projected $663 average increase in a single-family tax bill driven primarily by fixed costs, school budget growth, and some health insurance increases. Multiple line items were taken up separately after residents questioned finance, IT and insurance expenses and the police salary line. Department heads and staff explained the principal drivers: a larger audit and reallocation of audit costs (finance), higher cloud and cybersecurity costs and equipment renewals (IT), and rising employee health premiums and property/casualty claims (insurance). Voters approved the questioned line items after explanations and follow-up (each line item passed individually).

The school budget produced the meeting’s most sustained debate. Superintendent Lisonbee Borchers presented a reduced ‘‘level services’’ school budget that cut roughly $398,000 and eliminated 7.95 positions while preserving core programs. The Select Board proposed a lower amendment and a group of voters proposed a deeper cut; after an extended exchange that included a 10-minute presentation by the school committee, a tri-board history of requests, and multiple resident speakers, the meeting followed its bylaw process of voting from the highest-dollar proposal downward. The AFC-recommended figure of $70,466,789 prevailed in the final tally (vote: 424–270). The moderator stressed that the school committee retains authority to allocate the total school appropriation across line items once approved by Town Meeting.

Procedural notes: the meeting used electronic voting for line-item and article votes. The moderator explained rules for petitioned (nonbinding) resolutions — debate limited to 15 minutes per petition — before the day’s citizen petitions were taken up. The meeting concluded with votes on capital and borrowing articles (library borrowing, sewer infrastructure, community center HVAC rebates, and others) and then dissolved.

The budget vote resolves Westborough’s fiscal plan for FY26; a number of capital and borrowing items also passed, including the library borrowing authorization. The school committee and municipal departments will now implement the approved appropriations; several items (like enterprise fund adjustments and the wastewater plan) will require follow-up work and scheduled project execution.