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Select Board ties health-insurance review to long-term budget pressures and revenue strategies
Summary
Officials said health insurance is a growing share of Westford's operating budget, cited budget task force recommendations and described steps already taken — OPEB focus, fee reviews, auctioning surplus equipment and economic development efforts to grow commercial tax base.
Select Board Chair Chris Barrett and Town Manager Kristen Lass framed the listening session within Westford’s larger fiscal picture: rising health-insurance costs, reliance on one-time funds in recent budgets, and the need for structural solutions. The 2023 budget task force identified health insurance as a principal pressure and estimated a $1–2 million impact in FY25–26, the town manager said.
Lass highlighted other measures the town has pursued: reductions in staff after the override failed, centralizing fleet fueling, creating a self-sustaining recreation enterprise, energy-efficiency projects, and a full fee study to align user fees with costs. She and other select-board members also described a tax-classification working group and economic-development efforts aimed at expanding the commercial tax base as longer-term revenue strategies.
Board members emphasized that health-insurance changes are one component of a broader fiscal strategy and that any adjustments will be evaluated against other options. "If we don't tend that garden over time and they continue to consume more and more resource, it's less teachers, fewer firefighters," one board member said, underlining the trade-offs at stake.
