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Winchester’s Capital Planning Committee wants fall Town Meeting to spend about $4 million from the town’s two capital stabilization funds. The bigger number presented Sept. 28 sat outside the request: roughly $19 million in capital needs the town has no plan to pay for.
About $12 million of that is Town Hall, Capital Planning Committee Chair Enzo Rascionato told the Select Board.
“We really don’t have a solution around Town Hall yet,” he said.
Rascionato described the $19 million as the gap between department requests and what the Building Stabilization Fund and Capital Stabilization Fund can support, with water and sewer projects handled separately. It is a planning estimate, not a bill due this year.
He said the gap was about $50 million a year ago and shrank mostly because the committee now counts on Community Preservation Act money for some projects and because a $22 million downtown revitalization project dropped off.
The board reviewed the recommendations, but took no vote.
Town Manager Christopher Senior’s report says the board will vote on and publish the warrant Oct. 5. Town Meeting, scheduled to open Nov. 5, must approve any spending.
What’s on the fall list?
Rascionato said the program draws about $2.5 million from the Capital Stabilization Fund and about $1.5 million from the Building Stabilization Fund.
Much of it pays for design and studies, including heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) design for Ambrose School, a study of expanding air conditioning at McCall Middle School and Vinson-Owen Elementary School and exterior concrete design at Winchester High School.
The Lincoln School flatwork is construction. The $1.8 million job was split into two $900,000 phases so the second could wait a year or two; the first is on the fall warrant.
The committee also set aside $1 million over two years for a replacement fire engine so the town can pay cash rather than borrow, Rascionato said. Roads and sidewalks, traffic-safety work, a columbarium and water treatment projects round out the list.
Design now, build later
Eight projects carry what Rascionato called “a future year impact.” The committee expects those designs to produce about $8 million in construction requests in later years.
None of it is in this fall’s request, and Rascionato called the figures estimates; pinning down real costs is part of why the town pays for design.
“We know we’re making an investment,” he said. “We know that we’re going to have to spend this money later on.”
The method is rough. The Mystic School shoring design is pegged at $100,000 and the committee’s model carries $1 million for the work by multiplying that by 10, a presenter explained.
Those later bills are why the committee is not drawing the Building Stabilization Fund down, said Capital Planning Committee Vice Chair Brian Vernaglia.
Spending it to zero would leave nothing for the construction that follows, he said. Future phases will be paid with cash, borrowing or, he said, “a combination of both, which is probably what’s going to have to happen.”
Money was not the only limit. Another speaker said staff had reached capacity for managing more engineering studies and projects.
“Probably could have funded one more thing, but probably didn’t have the bandwidth to deliver it,” the speaker said.
Where the downtown project went
Select Board Vice Chair William McGonigle asked why downtown revitalization had come off the list.
Rascionato said it was never submitted. Senior added nobody had presented it to him.
McGonigle said buckling downtown sidewalks may mean the roads and sidewalks budget needs another look.
Another speaker remembered it as an $8 million project.
“So how it became 22 I don’t quite know,” the speaker said.
Moments later someone added, to laughter, “First, let’s understand how we got from 8 to $22 million.”
No one explained the difference or said whether the two figures covered the same work.
Winchester News reported in August 2024 that a downtown plan for Quill Rotary, Main Street and the Waterfield Road and Thompson Street triangle had been designed with a state earmark but had no construction money. Michelle Prior, then board chair, said she would not spend “$6 or $8 million” on downtown sidewalks.
In November 2025, Winchester News reported, then-Capital Planning Committee Chair Roger McPeek told Town Meeting that Town Hall needed $8.5 million in HVAC work that stabilization accounts could not fund.
Senior said the goal is a Town Hall plan within about a year, in time for next fall’s Town Meeting. One official put accessibility work alone at about $600,000, and board members asked whether construction could be phased so offices stay open.
Presenters said stabilization funds and community preservation money alone will not cover the Town Hall work. For now, the $12 million has no line in the plan.
Will Dowd is a Massachusetts journalist who covers municipal government and community life for Winchester News. He is also the founder and editor of The Marblehead Independent, a reader-funded digital newsroom.
