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Editor’s Note: Earlier this summer, we sent our intern Xiyue Eric Han out to meet public officials in Winchester and ask them what they do when it comes to town government. Here’s what he found out.
Ask around Winchester what the Finance Committee (FinCom) does and you’ll hear that it controls the school budget, decides which projects are built, and takes a side on the override.
None of that is true.
“I think people think we have a lot more power than we actually have,” said Kathryn Hughes, who was appointed chair of the committee this summer after several years as a member. “People think we make a lot of policy decisions. We don’t.”
What the committee does is more focused and easy to underrate: it reads the town’s budget with an objective lens, close enough to explain it in detail to the 192 people in Town Meeting who vote on it. FinCom only proposes the number; Town Meeting is the one who approves it.
What is the structure?
Winchester’s Town Meeting acts as the legislative body in town, made up of 192 members, 24 from each of the eight precincts. Of Massachusetts’s 351 municipalities, only 32 still run this way.
The Finance Committee is one of the Town Meeting’s standing committees, and unlike many other committees around town, such as the School Committee or Planning Board, nobody votes on the members.
The 15 members of the committee are appointed to staggered three-year terms in groups of five by a three-person panel consisting of the chair of the Select Board, the Town Moderator, and the Finance Committee’s own chair.
This structure exists because the committee answers to Town Meeting rather than voters. Massachusetts state law requires a body like this, and requires it to bring Town Meeting a recommended budget for the upcoming fiscal year where projected spending doesn’t exceed projected revenue. The rest of the job is outlined in Chapter 2, Section 4.1 of the Winchester town bylaws.
FinCom’s crucial role
The Finance Committee serves to give the members of Town Meeting an accurate idea of the town’s finances. An independent set of eyes on whatever anybody’s asking for, whatever anybody wants to spend.
“Most people in Town Meeting: A, don’t have enough time to review that, or B, don’t have the inclination to do it, or C, don’t feel comfortable doing it because they just don’t like dealing with finances, all good reasons,” said Hughes.
But this is the sole reason why FinCom exists. The job is to be data driven and to give their best recommendation based on that.
FinCom needs to balance the budget. Hughes puts it simply, “If we’re going to spend $5, we need to generate $5 from somewhere.”
What does FinCom really vote on?
Much of the confusion of residents comes from this detail.
For each municipal department, FinCom votes on just three numbers: salaries, expenses, and equipment. For the schools, it votes on just one number: the lump sum. FinCom doesn’t assign a number for teachers or curriculum or buses, that decision is in the hands of the superintendent’s office and School Committee.
“Once that number is approved, we’re out of the process,” Hughes explained.
One power that FinCom does hold year round is the town’s reserve fund, a small pot of money for genuine emergencies, such as a roof collapsing on a building in town which needs immediate repair. When something like this comes up, a department brings a transfer request to the committee, which votes it up or down.
The timeline
The process starts in the fall, when FinCom starts to meet regularly. The nine subcommittees, ranging from communications to revenues, take up any fall warrant article, item up for a vote at Town Meeting, that costs money. Each of these subcommittees have their own responsibilities.
The committee as a whole also builds a three-year financial projection.
In the winter, the town manager delivers a recommended budget: line items for every municipal department, one total allocation for the schools. From February through April, the subcommittees work department by department, meeting with each department head.
By early May, a recommended budget goes to the spring Town Meeting, with a full written report explaining the reasoning behind each decision. Town Meeting votes and can choose to ignore the recommendation. Though, it is bound by the same balanced-budget requirement the committee is.
After the budget is approved, FinCom is out of the picture. The process repeats the next fall.
What it looked like this year
Fiscal year 2027 (FY27) is the clearest outline in years of what the committee can and cannot do.
Voters rejected an $11.5 million override, a ballot measure allowing a local government to permanently increase property taxes above standard state caps to fund public services, back in March by a vote of 2,558 to 2,265. The question contained $9 million for operations with $2.5 million for capital for a total of $11.5 million.
The rejection broke a long streak of Proposition 2½ questions in Winchester as every single one has passed since 2017, including the Lynch Elementary project in 2023 with 82.4% support. Proposition 2½ is a Massachusetts law that caps the growth of a town’s property tax levy at 2.5% a year plus new growth.
That left roughly two months to rebuild a budget written on the assumption that the override would pass. The schools had submitted an 8.3% increase in budget, they came back with 4.4%.
Town meeting passed a $171 million FY27 budget on May 7, up 3.1% with the following breakdown:
● $73.5 million for the schools, up 4.4%, roughly 43% of the total budget.
● $49.6 million for municipal departments, up 3.3%
● $31.4 million for benefits, energy and insurance, up 6.9%
● $7.6 million into stabilization funds, a reserve account to smooth out swings in revenues, handle energies, and fund major projects
● $5.9 million for water and sewer, and smaller items
Closing the gap took $3.2 million out of savings, cut 32.5 school positions, a Fire Department hiring freeze, a deferred police cruiser and Public Works cuts.
Where does the money come from?
Property taxes are the town’s main revenue source. It gives Winchester in the ballpark of $3.3 million in additional tax revenue each year. New growth is small in a town that is almost entirely built out and residential.
The fiscal year 2026 (FY26) rate is $10.56 per $1,000 of assessed value for every class of property. Winchester has taxed homes and businesses at the same rate since 1984.
Homeowners then pay an additional 52 cents per $1,000 under a special act called Chapter 110, which covers water and sewer debt and applies only to residential property, for an effective residential rate of $11.08. The average single-family bill this year is around $18,272.
State aid does help but doesn't move much. In FY27, the state sent Winchester $12 million in Chapter 70 school aid and $2 million in general municipal aid.
Costs do not grow at 2.5%. Hughes puts it simply: “everything is going up.”
Health insurance is the clearest example. Winchester’s premiums jumped almost 19% in FY26, from $13.9 million to roughly $16.5 million, and the town planned FY27 around another 15 percent. That single line moves more money than most departments spend in a year. That is the exact problem, spending is outpacing revenue.
“What happened this year, which has happened for the past three or four years, is we’ve started the budget process with that being out of balance,” said Hughes “In other words, expenses exceeded income.”
The rest is contracts. Salaries and benefits are the overwhelming majority of both the school and municipal budgets, and a signed contract isn't something a subcommittee can trim.
The town’s ‘savings account’ and credit rating
When revenue falls short, the town looks to cover the gap with its free cash: money left over from prior years, functionally a savings account. The number landed at around $21 million rolling into spring.
“That’s not something that FinCom likes to do, because it’s jeopardizing that balance,” Hughes said.
The Select Board’s policy, since 2010, is to keep free cash and the general stabilization fund together between 6 to 10% of total revenue.
Drawing them down has consequences beyond the obvious one. Moody’s Rating pegs Winchester at Aaa, its top grade, which allows the town to borrow at a lower rate. The agency noted that Winchester’s reserves were lower than its peers and named a reserve decline as a trigger for a rating downgrade.
A line FinCom won’t cross
The committee takes no position on policy, and it took none on the override.
“We bend over backwards not to do that. We’re all about numbers,” Hughes said. “If you ask FinCom to state an opinion on something like the override, the answer will be no.”
Maintaining distance from politics is not the same as being uncontroversial. The budget recommendation is still a number somebody needs to live with and a number that will impact many lives.
During the previous spring cycle, the School Committee’s adopted budget was $1.7 million above what the Finance Committee recommended, and FinCom suggested the district use about $1 million in state special-education reimbursement to close the gap. That was not taken.
Derek Ross, the outgoing chair, described the relationship at Town Meeting as not good.
If you would like to watch
FinCom meetings are public, and Town Meeting convenes twice, once in the fall and once in the spring. The override question isn’t expected to stay closed and the Select Board has been debating when to ask again.
“I’d strongly encourage you to attend,” Hughes said. “Apart from anything else, every citizen should understand how this process works, because it’s representing the citizens.”
Xiyue Eric Han is a student at Winchester High School. He has been an intern with Winchester News since summer 2025.
