EASTHAM — Voters at the May 4 annual town meeting will be asked to approve two Proposition 2½ overrides totaling $1.32 million to fund the town’s fiscal 2025 budget — including more than $1 million in increased education spending that caught town officials by surprise.
A second override request asks for $300,000 to hire two additional police officers. Approval of both overrides requires a two-thirds majority vote at town meeting and a majority vote at the May 21 town election. If both are adopted, next year’s property tax bill on a house of median value will increase by about $195.
The total town budget for 2025 in Article 2A on the warrant comes to $44,180,055 — a 14-percent increase over last year, which the finance committee in its message to voters attributes largely to debt service on the renovation of Nauset Regional High School and on wastewater planning projects.
But a significant portion of the increase is in the school budgets, whose details did not arrive in financial planners’ hands until very late in the process.
“In early January, there was a balanced budget,” said Town Manager Jacqui Beebe. “It was pretty conservative, but there were some unknowns, including the school budget. We knew that there was going to be increased enrollment at the school. But then we started to get the school budgets in, and we realized we had a problem.”
The problem was multi-faceted.
Increased enrollment of Eastham students at both Nauset High and Cape Cod Regional Technical High School resulted in an unexpected increase of $592,000 in the town’s share of the two regional school budgets. The number of Eastham students at Nauset went from 224 to 239, at an increased cost of $475,000. At the Tech, the increase was from 22 to 28 students, costing an additional $117,000. Beebe said town officials knew the enrollment numbers but did not know how much they would cost the town.
A second financial hit in the school budget came from what the finance committee called “a dramatic spike” in special education costs. Out-of-district placements for three students at Eastham Elementary School — which the town is required to pay for — will cost an extra $335,544 this year.
Another $85,000 of increases in general school operating costs brought the total shortfall to just over $1 million.
According to finance committee vice chair Tom McNamara, the surprising gap in the school budget forecast was a result of poor communication from the schools’ central office and the regional schools budget subcommittee. Nauset Regional Schools Supt. Brooke Clenchy said that the process was no different this year than in other years, and that Eastham simply had more students enrolled in the two high schools than before and had to pay for it.
But McNamara told the select board on March 25 that the regional school budget subcommittee “continued to develop a budget in isolation, not giving us drafts until very late. We made overtures. We invited them no less than four times to come to one of our meetings just once and explain where they were, and they always found a reason to cancel at the last minute.”
Clenchy said that the budget was developed on the normal timeline, with the first draft becoming available to the budget subcommittee in January. “Even though we are putting the budgets out to our school committees, they’re not finding their way to the finance committees,” she said.
Clenchy added that she was hoping to improve the process next year and get the budgets to the town finance committees earlier.
Town meeting voters do not have the option of not funding the regional school budget.
“It’s important for voters to understand that if this override does not pass, it will still fall on the shoulders of the taxpayer,” said select board member Jamie Demetri. “It just means it’s going to come about in a different way.”
If the school override is rejected, the town will have to cut its municipal budget by $1.02 million to cover the school expenses. A contingency budget prepared for that eventuality would kick in.
“In some sense, we’re victims of our success,” said Beebe. “We’re trying to get more families and children, and if all goes well, then the school numbers go up.”
Fight Over Funding Formula
Another point of contention between the select board and the schools was the Nauset Regional School District funding formula, which determines how much each town in the district contributes. Since 2002, the schools have used an “alternative formula” based largely on student populations, according to Regional School Committee chair Chris Easley.
This year, the school committee voted to use a “statutory formula” that Easley said is “more equitable,” with the amount contributed by each town proportional to the wealth of the town.
That choice resulted in $51,000 in additional costs for Eastham.
“The school committee decided to change the formula this year without talking to any other town,” said Beebe. “It threw everything off, and it was a last-minute surprise. The school committee seemed totally unaware that it would impact us.”
Article 2B on the warrant offers voters a chance to put the alternative formula back in place. Select board member Gerry Cerasale said that the article would “be a signal to the Regional School Committee that we didn’t agree, and we might not agree in the future if we don’t have some cooperative discussions and decision-making.”
Staffing the Police Dept.
The second budget override requests $300,000 for two new police officers. Chief Adam Bohannon initially requested $600,000 for four officers, but Beebe and Finance Director Rich Bienvenue said that the budget was too constrained this year for that large an increase.
“This is something that we’ve been talking about for a few years now, trying to find the right time to do it and there never seems to be a right time,” said Bohannon.
He said that there has not been an additional patrol officer in the department since 1995 except the school resource officer. The department currently has 17 officers.
Bohannon said that the department has seen an increase in the amount of time it takes to deal with calls, from stricter demands on documentation of incidents to an increase in mental health calls.
Beebe said that the select board is committed to funding for four new officers even if it can’t happen in one year.
“The last thing we want is tired, exhausted, grumpy police officers,” she said. “If they can’t take vacation days, if they can’t take sick days, if they have forced overtime, that becomes a quality-of-life issue for the officer and then they will move on to other towns.”
The select board unanimously voted for Article 2D, the police override, which would raise yearly taxes for the median-value home by $44.
