This Week's Winchendon News
Town Manager Presents Final FY 2027 Budget to Joint BOS and FinCom Meeting
Members of the BOS and FinCom discuss the FY 27 increase in water rates
Photo copyright Town of Winchendon
On Monday, March 30, the Board of Selectmen and the Finance Committee held a joint meeting on the final version of the FY 2027 town budget as presented by Town Manager Bill McKinney.
Mr. McKinney put a presentation on the screen that was similar to the presentation he gave of the draft budget in February, explaining that there were "a few changes" and updated numbers since then. The draft budget included some placeholders for exact amounts that were still coming in, such as the Montachusett Regional Vocational Technical School (Monty Tech) tuition.
The final school budget amount was $8,308 higher, for a total of $18,667,547 (an increase from FY 2026 of $616,477 or 3.37 percent). The Police, Fire Department and Department of Public Works budgets had each gone down from the draft budget. "I did ask [them] to trim some their costs, which they did," Mr. McKinney said. The biggest "trim" was the DPW's who pared about $50,000 off their draft budget request.
Mr. McKinney explained that he increased the budget for legal services. "A lot of things are happening in town that we do require legal help with," he said. "And then a lot of the other costs are just salary increases and other costs that continue to grow, unfortunately."
Monty Tech tuition came in at $4,000 less than Mr. McKinney's draft estimate, for a total of $646,000 for FY 27. The amounts for school tuition and school bus transportation did not change from the draft budget. School busing is budgeted for $1,856,000 and school tuition is $1,041,790. "We are working with the school department on the school bus transportation that's, as you can see, a huge expense," Mr. McKinney said. "So we do have them looking at different route options to see if there's any savings that could be had going into the next year. They are still working on that. So hopefully we won't end up spending that amount. But we don't know that final number yet, so I had to be conservative in my estimate." He added, "A lot of money is flowing out for school tuition. A lot of that is school choice."
The last slide for Expenses showed some hefty amounts. Retirement is budgeted at $2,705,000, an increase of 10.46 percent. "So the retirement, just so everyone's aware, that is scheduled to go up 10 percent each year until the year 2035, which is when the pension should be fully funded," Mr. McKinney said. "So unfortunately, as you can see, 10 percent on such a large number takes up a lot of additional of the additional revenue that we would get each year, it is going into the retirement. The Workers Compensation came in flat, which was good. Unemployment costs continue to go up. Then the Health/Life Insurance, most of that is health insurance in that line item." The total amount for health/life insurance is $3,415,000, an increase of 9.01 percent. "On the original budget, I had put in 15 percent, and then we got the word that it came in at eight and a half percent. So that was very helpful. And then, obviously, as salaries grow, so too do Medicare taxes."
The final expenses amount for FY 2027 is $40,122,397, an increase of 5.58 percent.
Mr. McKinney paused in the presentation for some questions from Board members. Board of Selectmen member Audrey LaBrie asked if there were any new positions in the FY 2027 budget, besides the two additional firefighters who would be covered by increased ambulance revenue. Mr. McKinney said there are none.
Board of Selectmen Chair Andrew Beauvais asked if Mr. McKinney had been part of the school bus discussion with the schools, since that service was on the town side of the budget.
"I have, I've asked them if they could look at the routes," Mr. McKinney said. "I was involved when we had the bus contract that went out to bid. This is going to be year two of the three, and potentially up to five years originally. They came in with a 24 percent increase in year one, and then I think it was 3333, we were able to negotiate that down, the prior superintendent to 12, and then 6666...about half of the cost is on the fixed bus routes, and then the other half is on the Special Education bus routes, and then some cost for the homeless transportation. So the potential savings could be on the fixed bus routes. So right now they have ten. They used to have nine. If they could go back to nine, that would be a savings. So I know that they're working on that with the bus company. The other issue to consider on that is that the School Committee sets the radius for who gets transported. So by law, it's up through sixth grade if you live outside of two miles, I believe that you have to provide transportation. Everything else would be up to the School Committee if they want to do anything more than that, which I believe they do."
Ms. LaBrie said, "I would like to ask someone from the School Committee to present to the Board and/or joint boards, where those discussions are. I realize that they said it, but we pay for it. So this is kind of like taxation without representation. So if we can get that from the School Committee, I would like to see what they're doing to make that number as viable as possible, while at the same time providing the services that our students need."
Board of Selectmen member Erika Eitland said, "When I look at that school tuition number, and think about almost $900,000 accounting for school choice, I also want to understand from the [School Committee], what are they doing to help keep students here? Because that would start getting that number lower. So it's not only about bus transportation to get kids to school, but are we getting them to school so we keep the money from the school tuition perspective as well. I think this is a huge piece of our budget that needs to be shared."
Mr. McKinney went on to the slides showing anticipated revenues for the next fiscal year. The two largest chunks of revenue for the town are the property tax levy ($18,063,200 for FY 2027, an increase of 3.12 percent) and Chapter 70/Local Aid from the state ($16,632,954 for FY 2027, an increase of 0.73 percent). Those two combined account for 87.87 percent of the anticipated revenue. Most of the smaller revenue items are level-funded from FY 2026, with no change forecast. Ambulance revenues are projected to almost double. Motor vehicle excise tax is expected to increase $50,000 or 4.0 percent. "Other cherry sheet" revenue includes money from the state for things like veterans' benefits and money the town gets back from state-owned land. It is anticipated to more than double from FY 2026, but the total is only $462,719.
The total budgeted revenue for FY 2027 is $39,487,403, an increase of 4.22 percent.
In answer to questions, Mr. McKinney explained that he is conservative with estimating cannabis revenue because the industry is not really growing, and Winchendon retailers will see a decrease in traffic from New Hampshire if that state legalizes recreational marijuana. He was conservative with investment income because interest rates were dropping.
FinCom member Charles Corts brought up the ambulance revenue proposal, saying that they didn't have figures for the existing ambulance receipts, and it seems like a big leap to project such a large increase.
Continuing with the presentation, Mr. McKinney showed a slide that broke down the tax levy increase by its components: prior year baseline, 2.5 percent increase under Proposition 2-1/2, the $1.9M override, and new growth. In FY 2026, new growth accounted for only $106,705 or 4.48 percent of the total increase in the levy amount. Projected new growth in FY 2027 is only $80,000. "New growth" is an amount on which there would hypothetically be no cap.
Mr. McKinney also showed again a slide displaying the change in state aid over the last few years and how much it has decreased. Some of the large increases in past years were due to COVID money, but this year's increase is less than 1 percent. "If the state were to give more to local towns, that would be a big, big impact for everybody," Mr. McKinney said. "If you've been following the news, most towns, or a lot of towns, have overrides coming up this year because of the fact that...the Mass Municipal Association, on their website, they put together a study that talks about the "perfect storm" of limited property tax increases, but huge increases on the expense side, and the fact that what the state gives to the communities is not keeping up with what it should be. So if we were getting two and a half percent increase from the state, we'd be back up over $400,000 andd that'd be another $300,000 that would really help us to balance the budget, if they just gave us two and a half percent more."
(You can see the report on the Mass Municipal Association's website at https://www.mma.org/resources/a-perfect-storm-cities-and-towns-face-historic-fiscal-pressures/.)
Mr. McKinney moved to a slide showing Net School Spending. This is an amount set by the state each year, based on a number of factors, that each community must by law contribute to the support of their local school district (whether it's a single-town district or part of a regionalized district). Required Net School Spending is the state mandate; Actual Net School Spending is the amount the community actually puts in. In FY 2026, Winchendon's Required Net School Spending was set at $21,245,551, and the town budgeted $22,188,620--$943,069 (or 4.44 percent) more than the minimum. "We have been aggressively exceeding the net school spending requirement each year," Mr. McKinney said.
Ms. LaBrie said that by her calculation, based on these numbers, Winchendon was spending about $16,700 per student, which seemed high to her. "I would also take a look at not only what we want to be spending, but what are the results that are we getting?" she said. "How are the numbers doing? How are the kids doing, emotionally, socially, intellectually, everything across the board. I think it would be a very interesting study. Perhaps the School Committee could request a grant to do a study and actually look into the numbers. Are we getting our money's worth? Are our students getting what they need?...I think we really, really need to dig into these numbers."
Ms. Eitland said that according to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) website, Winchendon's per-student spending in 2024 was $19,584. By comparison, the state average is about $23,000 per student. "We're a small district, but by no means are we spending incredible amounts on our students," she said.
Mr. McKinney went on to say that with the adjusted numbers, the budget now had a deficit of $634,994. Free Cash has been certified at about $2.2 million, so Mr. McKinney proposed balancing the budget for this year from Free Cash. "At least that will get us through this year while keeping an eye on the future and also, you know, for the economic development that we've been working on to try to bring in new growth into the town," he said. This would use about 29 percent of the amount in Free Cash.
There was some discussion about the pros and cons of balancing the budget from Free Cash, and the need to put money into the Stabilization Fund as a buffer, and several other funds that had not gotten their annual amounts for a couple of years due to the deficit crunch. This was followed by more discussion of the school bus costs and the importance of working with the School Committee to see how those could be reduced. Mr. Beauvais said, "I think it would force some really creative thinking on bus routes, transportation in general. I agree with that. The goal here is that we're all working together, right? It's not us against them. We're all in this together, but at the end of the day, we have a responsibility to our residents that we're not continuing to either ask for tax increases or tapping into our Free Cash when I would much rather see that money invested in improving the town or perhaps even building our economic base in some way."
To conclude his presentation, Mr. McKinney went over the four Enterprise Funds: Water, Sewer, Transfer Station and PEG Access (cable TV). The big take-away for these is that both Water and Sewer rates will be increasing by double digit amounts. Water rates will be increased by 23 percent, and sewer rates will increase 13 percent. User fees at the transfer station--fees for a transfer station sticker and pay-as-you-throw (PAYT) bags will increase, with stickers going from $85 to $95 and bags going up $0.25 each. Templeton is in its last year of the contract to use Winchendon's transfer station and its Select Board will be deciding whether to renew the contract, which is worth about $10,000 to Winchendon.
There was some discussion about the water meters for Winchendon homes and whether some homes had no meters or needed repairs. DPW Director Patrick Wood came forward to explain, "There's probably roughly about 250 to 300 customers out there with the old meters that we've been trying to get in and replace. We haven't had much success. We're going to try other routes to try to get in. There's avenues we can go down to try to get in there and to replace them. Will it solve the rate increase? I couldn't tell you, because all the customers that have all these old meters are operating on estimated reads. Those estimated reads could be higher or lower than what their actual reads are. So in the end, it could be a wash."
There was some lengthy discussion about the continuous increase in the water rates, and what effect the new water main was having. Board of Selectmen member Melissa Blanchard pointed out the Catch-22 in the fact that the higher the rates go, the more water users conserve and cut back on their water use, and as a result the rates have to go up again to cover costs. "It's dramatic when you're trying to budget your bill and everything else is going up, and it's just that we're being penalized for being good citizens and conserving. It's kind of insanity in my mind," she said.
Following the discussion, the floor was opened for public comment.
Resident Barbara Zisk came forward with some questions. Her first question was about Net School Spending. "Why are we over exceeding that budget? If we're required by law to be the net spending, why are we over exceeding that?" she asked. Mr. Beauvais suggested that Ms. Zisk speak with Mr. McKinney about this one-to-one, since he didn't want to violate Open Meeting Law.
Ms. Zisk then asked about the back taxes owed to the town, which she understood were going to be looked at in July due to the conversion to the Munis accounting system.
Mr. McKinney said, "So as far as the back taxes, the taxes are not in this [budget] because even when we do collect them, that's one time revenue...we are converting from QDS into Munis. The QDS could not handle tax titles, so we have to have everything on spreadsheets for those that are in tax title. So it made sense to wait until the actual conversion before we do the new tax title takings. I will say, though, that the tax titles is a long process. I mean, a lot of people think, oh, you know, people owe the money. We just take them to court and get the payment. That's not how it works. The property that burned over on Lincoln Avenue Extension, the town put in a tax title in 2019 and the court still has not awarded it to us for a tax taking, even though we keep asking and asking. It takes years for it to go through the land court if the owner doesn't pay, and again, we have to take him to court. It's in the court for year after year after year. So that's a huge problem."
Ms. Zisk continued, "The other thing that I just want to bring forward, because it's been a very big concern in the community, is some of the homes up on Lake Monomanac that were camps that are now homes, there was a question of how they were being taxed, that they were still being taxed as camps. If you don't want to address that right now, but I'm asking for it to be looked into, if you could, and get back to me on that. Because I would like to know if you wouldn't mind."
Mr. McKinney said he could do that. Returning to the Net School Spending topic, he said, "If we ever had to cut the budget different places, wherever, we could not drop below the net school spending number. It doesn't mean we can't exceed it. Most communities, well over 300 out of 351, spend more than the required net school spending. So that is the number that the school department requested. So they weren't saying, Oh, wait, let's go over net school spending. It's, what does it take to educate children?"
Ms. Zisk pushed harder at the question, asked again why the town had to exceed the required amount set by the state if that was all that the law demanded. Mr. Beauvais suggested that Ms. Zisk take her question directly to the School Committee.
Murdock HS Students Show Audience a Rolicking Good Time with Morton E. Converse Tournament of Plays
All four casts assemble onstage for the awards presentations
Photo by Inanna Arthen
The Murdock Middle High School Auditorium was packed on Saturday evening, March 28 for the second and final night of the 2026 Morton E. Converse Tournament of Plays. The oldest continuously running one-act play festival in Massachusetts, this tournament features one-act plays produced and performed by members of each high school class--freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors--in competition for awards. The plays debut on Friday night and awards are given after the performances on Saturday.
Each year sees a wide variety of one-act plays selected, so audiences never know what to expect. They are almost always humorous or whimsical, but the amount of sets and costumes, the amount of dialogue in proportion to action, the number and balance of characters and up to a point, the length, vary quite a bit. The order in which the plays are performed on each night is randomized, so the audience doesn't know which play will be next until the title is announced. This keeps things lively for the stage crews, as well.
This year the Class of 2029 (freshmen) staged "Who's on Alpha?" by Mike McCafferty and Matt Thompson;
the Class of 2028 (sophomores) put on "Tough City, Prone to Rain" by Alan Haehnel;
the Class of 2027 (juniors) put on "Story Theater" by Paul Sills;
and the Class of 2026 (seniors) performed "So You Think You Can Date?" by M.G. Davidson.
The first play on the boards on Saturday was "Tough City, Prone to Rain." This was probably the longest and certainly the most complex of the four plays. A comic take-off on classic film noir, with a particular nod to The Maltese Falcon, "Tough City, Prone to Rain" featured the Broadly Speaking Detective Agency with three dressed-to-the-nineteens women (don't call them dames) detectives and their male office assistant in a dark, rainy city that remained unnamed but had a waterfront with shark-infested waters. Lost and confused (or was she really?) Donna Rockbridge (Brooke Arsenault) found the agency (it wasn't easy) and asked the detectives to track down her twin sister (Meghan Wightman), who ran away with the family jewels (or did she?). From this point, the plot had so many twists, so much back story for the detectives, so many characters, and so many locations, it hardly qualified as a one-act play. The three detectives, played by Abigail Blake, Rebekah Boisvert and MacKenzie Simoneau, looked up old cronies as they hunted for tips, while their client waited in the office getting annoyed with their assistant. Meanwhile the stage was constantly filled with a stream of various characters, including a newsie (Morgan Nelson) who kept crossing the stage hawking headlines for things that happened two seconds ago. There was a twist ending, of course, and Justice was served...maybe I should rephrase that as the shark-infested waters were involved.
The cast really had a lot to handle, and they did an impressive job with what was one of the most complicated--and highly populated--one-acts I think I've ever seen. The office set had a desk, chairs, a large sign, and a phone; there was second set with table and chairs, a rolling cart, and the movable door and doorframe last seen in the musical did yeoman's duty. Several of the actors played multiple roles. The color gels in the stage lights were used to good effect. It was a little hard to follow the action, however, because sometimes it was tough to catch all the dialogue, and if you missed a line, you lost the thread of the story.
Other cast members were Samuel Abioye, Quinn Brimhall, Tristan Fuller, Cam Kowaleski, Myles Mrieth, Paetyn Simoneau, Luke Smith, and Nathaniel Tetteh. Director: Candace Frye.
"Story Theater" could hardly have been more different a play. Featuring six cast members (DJ Huggins, Mikey Quinn, Walter Moriarty, Bryce Teixeira, Addison Mistler and Seth Robinson), the play presented adapatations of three well-known fairy tales: "Henny Penny" (the one where we get "the sky is falling" trope), "The Fisherman and His Wife," and "The Golden Goose." They do it...with no set at all! Nothing, bare stage! Nor did the actors use props--everything was done in pantomime. The actors did wear very cute and fairly elaborate costumes--Foxy Woxy's tail was a funny touch. But each actor played multiple roles, relying largely on expression and movement to convey them. And they did this very well, especially their voice work and dialogue. The stories were very entertaining, although "The Golden Goose" seemed to combine two different tales and ran a little long. "The Fisherman and His Wife" is one of my all-time favorite tales, and this version did a wonderful job with the magical flounder, played by Addison Mistler, who "swam" along the front of the stage every time she was called.
Directors: Kaileen Dibble and Kristi Iannacone.
"So You Can Think You Can Date?" was a very broadly satirical take-off on reality TV contests (the title obviously invokes "So You Think You Can Dance"). Also with a large cast, this production utilized the door and doorframe, tables and chairs, and a lot of funny and elaborate costumes. The parody is slapped on with a heavy brush, so much so that the program printed a warning, "this play contains the use of hilariously ridiculous characters." The story began with two teens, Jessica and Brad (Kylieann Brown and Shamus Solomon), breaking up in a furious argument...the best three months and X days of their lives wasted! Right before the prom! Their best friends Debbie (Sophia Boisvert) and Phineas (Jack Varca) promised them they'd have dates, and put out a call for "auditions" for people to accompany them to the prom. Jessica and Brad then sat through a procession of over-the-top silliness, as every dating nightmare marched in to flounce, dance, cry uncontrollably (and those were the boys), sing, terrorize the room or emote. Even the school custodian showed up to try out. Debbie and Phineas had a plan with all this, of course, and their friends ended up with dates after all--each other, which they wanted all along.
This was very well done--the acting in particular was excellent, with the four principals always in character, always reacting, not afraid to get physical, and very funny. The hopeful auditioners--really, you had to see it, no description can do it justice--were played with uninhibited gusto by Colton Pearson, Holly Harris, Romeo Medeiros, Autumn Ayola, Kyle Brown, Yaleris Crespi-Martínez, Leah Maguy, Kianna Walsh, and Kevelyn Loughman-Vanwhy. Director: Jaclyn Daniels.
"Who's on Alpha?" was a bit odd as a choice--it had a cast of only three, who were somewhat hampered by their material. The play took off on two themes: the classic Abbott and Costello comedy routine "Who's On First?" and the classic 1960s Star Trek. The disadvantage here is that few people nowadays are familiar enough with the comedy routine to appreciate a take-off on it, and only a few more are familiar with the original Star Trek series. The humor was heavily dependent on the dialogue and that wasn't always easy to understand. The First Officer's deadpan literalism and refusal to say more words than absolutely necessary gave the "Who's on First" gag a nice twist, if you knew it well enough. I wondered if anyone else in the audience caught the "red shirt" joke at the beginning when the Captain (Sydney Houle) and First Officer (Sophee-Lyn Lambert) talked about their missing crewmember in voice-over. (The door and doorframe became the transporter--I think--in this one.) The actors did a good job with what they were given to work with, and the costumes were well done.
Especially well done was the inflatable puppet "alien carrying a crewmember" animated by Sophia Gauthier. Each time the alien and struggling (or not) crewmember cross the stage behind the oblivious officers, they're doing something different. It got to be a very funny sight gag and it was very effective. I really look forward to seeing this cast in something that does their talent better justice.
Director: Kelly Fitzpatrick.
After a long wait for the judges to finish their deliberations, all four casts were called up on stage for the presentation of the awards. Here they are:
Award Winners:
Best Costumes - Class of 2028 (Sophomores)
Best Set - Class of 2028 (Sophomores)
Best Production Value - Class of 2028 (Sophomores)
Honorable Mentions:
Best Twinkletoes - Kyle Brown
Best Weeper - Romeo Medeiros
Best Use of Props - Rebekah Boisvert
Best Soundtrack - Class of 2027 (Juniors)
Best Alien Abduction - Sophia Gauthier
Most Entertaining Performers:
Nominees: Kyle Brown, Colton Pearson, Walter Moriarity, Tristan Fuller, Rebekah Boisvert
Winners: Colton Pearson & Walter Moriarity
Best Performer in a Supporting Role:
Nominees: Holly Harris, Jack Varca, Addison Mistler, Bryce Teixeira, Luke Smith, Morgan Nelson, Sophia Gauthier
Winners: Bryce Teixeira & Jack Varca
Best Performer:
Nominees: Kylieann Brown, Sophia Boisvert, Doris (DJ) Huggins, Michael Quinn, Brooke Arsenault, Sophee-Lyn Lambert, Sydney Houle
Winners: Sophia Boisvert & Doris (DJ) Huggins
Best Ensemble:
Class of 2027 (Juniors)
Best Play (and year-long bragging rights!):
Class of 2026 (Seniors)
Congratulations to all the performers, crew members, tech and directors for another fabulously entertaining Tournament of Plays! Seniors, I wish you all the best; the rest of you, I can't wait to see you on the Murdock stage next year!
(And a word in the ears of the Murdock HS Arts and Music faculty: I see no reason that Murdock should not enter one of the regional or state-wide one-act play competitions. No reason at all. Just sayin'!)
Winchendon Candidates Set for 2026 Town Election
Candidates' Night Forum Set for Tuesday, April 28
Candidates have been confirmed for the 2026 Town Election, which will take place on Monday, May 4. The following Winchendon citizens have stepped up to run for seats on elected town boards:
Melissa Blanchard
Barbara Zisk
School Committee (two open seats)
Alissa Campbell
Michael Gaynor
Karen Kast-McBride
Yvonne Senecal
Monique Connor
Board of Health, 2-year term (one open seat)
Barbara Zisk
Board of Health, 1 year term (one open seat)
Paula Whitaker
Housing Authority
Nancy Romanowski
