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The Select Board, School Committee and Long Range Planning Committee, as well as members of the Finance Committee, convened for a tri-board meeting at the Lynch School.
The site was chosen for the Oct. 13 meeting because the Select Board room at Town Hall wasn’t large enough to accommodate everyone. This meeting was not recorded.
“It’s good to get everyone together,” said Town Manager Christopher Senior. “It was important to have everyone in the room together to talk about goals. No votes were taken.”
School Committee member John Bellaire agreed.
“It was constructive to have members of all three committees plus the town manager and school superintendent together to talk about developments as we prepare for fiscal 2028,” Bellaire said. “Having communication is critical so we can deliver the level of service the residents desire and be financially responsible.”
The fiscal year 2027 budget is $170,925,238, which is $31,094 higher than the fiscal year 2026 budget of $170,9894,144.
Senior described that .018% increase as flat and added it includes some reduction in services as a result of the override failure.
The FY27 School Department budget is at $73.5 million, $3.1 million higher than the $70.4 million in FY26. The 4.4% increase is in line with normal adjustments, given ongoing increases in educational costs related to employee salaries, transportation, in-district and especially out-of-district Special Education placements, among other things.
Despite the loss of 32 teachers, Bellaire said the town’s commitment to education has paid off, with a K-2 phonics program implemented in the 2023-24 school year and K-5 literacy programs implemented in 2025-26 resulting in Winchester having the state’s third-strongest third grade English scores in this year’s MCAS exam.
Many of the same financial issues are affecting the Town Hall budget. Revenue includes local taxes, fees and various sources of aid. Financial reserves include free cash and stabilization funds.
During the Oct. 13 meeting, Select Board member Michelle Prior gave a presentation on long-range financial planning, something the town is trying to incorporate into fiscal budgeting.
“How can we address challenges from increasing costs?” Senior asked rhetorically. “The long-term goal is to create structure for Winchester to manage financial needs.”
Prior’s presentation, which indicated a need for long-range financial planning, was also part of the State of the Town report in mid-2025. The Select Board endorsed the operation of a Long Range Financial Planning Committee in June.
Peer communities, such as Arlington, established a similar long-range framework in 2025. Brookline established its town-school partnership in 1995.
The idea is to forecast long-range growth in expenses and revenue, protect reserves and exercise “capital discipline with sustainable funding and assets planning.”
That includes having an override mitigation plan, which Prior’s presentation mentioned, and banking one-time resources for extended times between overrides as a possibility.
“A financial plan needs to inform an override,” reads the last slide in Prior’s presentation.
The slide goes on to advise taking steps towards building a model by agreeing on multi-year revenue and expenditure assumptions; setting growth targets by establishing Town Hall and School Department expectations and exceptions; adopting guardrails by defining reserve minimums and variance rules and triggers; evaluating alternatives by identifying efficiencies, revenues, service impacts and gaps and, only then, assessing the possibility of an override taking its size, timing and sustainability into consideration.
Among other financial obligations the town may have to face is paying for ongoing work at Town Hall, which dates to 1888, and doing building a new Muraco Elementary School, which opened in 1965.
The school building project is moving through its feasibility phase with the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA). As an affluent community, Winchester is liable to get less in reimbursement from the state than others.
The MSBA calculates a percentage of a project it will cover based on the economic status of the town. Wakefield, for example, received 26% reimbursement for its new $220-275 million high school.
Additional tri-board meetings are expected before the budget is finalized.
Neil Zolot has been a freelance journalist more than 40 years. He has worked for newspapers on the North Shore and in the Boston area.
