Table of Contents
Bill Swanson expected the blowers and condensers at Ambrose School to wear out after two decades. The pipes were another matter.
“Piping is something that lasts 100 years,” the Precinct 5 member told Town Meeting on Nov. 5, asking whether other newer schools faced the same trouble.
Officials told him Ambrose is a one-off. The general contractor went bankrupt during construction, and the town has no record that the heating water system received the chemical flush it needed before startup. Corrosion has been working its way out from inside pipes that date to the school’s 2005 opening.
“It’s to a point where we could get to catastrophic failure,” one said.
Members then voted $300,000 to design the fix. Nothing sharper happened on the first night of Fall Town Meeting at Winchester High School.
Members approved 17 capital motions totaling about $4.8 million, nearly all by unanimous voice vote, and passed three technical zoning changes without a single question.
They adjourned at 10:30 p.m. with Forest Ridge, a $350,000 retiree health transfer and the town’s structural deficit still waiting.
Better reserves, same gap
Finance Committee Chair Catherine Hughes opened the budget picture on an upbeat note: about $21 million in undesignated reserves and a capital backlog cut to $19 million. Then she turned. Revenue is not keeping pace with spending, the town has leaned on free cash for three straight years and she expects another structural deficit.
Select Board member Michelle Prior put figures to the warning. The spring forecast showed a $5 million gap; the town spent $3.4 million in free cash to close it, and next year opens with a deficit above $6 million.
Capital Planning Committee Chair Enzo Rascionato carried the strain into capital. Departments have asked for $63 million over five years, against about $42 million expected from the Building Stabilization Fund and the Capital Stabilization Fund, leaving a $21 million hole. Eight of Thursday’s projects are designs, studies or first phases that he estimated will cost about $8 million more later.
“When you’re voting one and a half, you’re really voting almost 10,” Rascionato said.
Town Hall, the committee’s top-ranked project for roughly three years running, does not fit in either fund.
“That’s going to take a village to fund,” he said.
The smooth night has a plain explanation. No capital dollar came from free cash, and most of the design votes buy plans while pushing construction bills into later years.
The one large free-cash request went the other way: Moderator Philip Frattaroli pulled the $350,000 retiree health transfer, Article 19, off the 13-article consent agenda before members approved the rest without debate.
Cracked columns and an 18-year-old engine
The school and building requests read like an inspection report. At Mystic School, concrete columns holding up two large classrooms are cracking, with reinforcing steel breaking away behind temporary shoring; members gave $100,000 to design the permanent repair. At the high school, crumbling masonry under the granite cap of the exterior stairs is propped up with two-by-fours, and $30,000 will pay an engineer to find out why.
Another $40,000 covers a Lincoln School field that, Rascionato said, “looks a lot like my lawn.”
NewsMatch is our biggest fundraising campaign of the year. Your donation could be doubled, or even tripled. To make the most of your donation, hit the button now. Thank you for supporting local news.
Members added $60,000 for districtwide building controls and $50,000 to study cooling at McCall and Vinson-Owen, where third-floor classrooms can top 100 degrees.
The biggest school item, $900,000 to rebuild Lincoln School’s walkways and stairs, passed unanimously. Nearly $412,000 of it is leftover bond money that Town Manager Christopher Senior said federal tax rules require the town to spend soon.
Four vehicles total $1.73 million. A transfer-station tractor cab with more than 450,000 miles costs $275,000; a utility vehicle replacing a rusting 2009 Ford, $115,000; an asphalt truck whose hot box no longer works, $240,000. Fire Engine 4, at $1.1 million, replaces an 18-year-old truck and will not arrive until 2028.
“It shouldn’t take two years to get a fire truck,” Senior had said.
Roads and traffic calming total $720,000. Public Works Director Robert LaBossiere said the $550,000 roads and sidewalks motion, which supplements state Chapter 90 money, will be split evenly between the two. It passed unanimously.
The $100,000 lines-and-signs program and $70,000 in traffic-calming studies each carried by two-thirds, meaning some members voted no.
Water and cemetery items total $840,000: $600,000 to repair the leaking raw-water pump building, $100,000 to design a lined backwash basin and $140,000 for a first-phase columbarium at Wildwood Cemetery.
The presenter called the article “an easy one.”
“Famous last words,” Frattaroli replied. “I’ll refer you to the leaf blower debate of 2023.”
The columbarium then drew the night’s longest questioning.
Precinct 7 member Jennifer Haefeli said residents fear the design would remove six mature oak trees. LaBossiere said the design still goes to the Select Board and has had no conservation or tree review.
It carried by two-thirds. Members closed by paying $33,032 in prior-year bills, one dating to fiscal 2021.
Planning Board Chair Jack LeMenager brought three technical articles, and no member rose on any of them.
Article 4 lets a conforming addition proceed by right on a lot that is too narrow and lowers the minimum lot width in the RDA district from 120 feet to 100 feet to match its frontage rule; it passed by two-thirds.
Article 5 struck the Center Business District Review Subcommittee, which LeMenager said left applicants facing four reviews instead of two. Article 6 trimmed Zoning Board of Appeals steps, ending a rule for up to 16 paper copies of plans. Both passed unanimously.
What waits for Nov. 9
Article 26 would authorize taking about 13 acres at Forest Ridge by eminent domain, and the Select Board has put off its recommendation.
Frattaroli pulled Article 19 citing “the discussion of the select board meeting on Monday, and elsewhere”; the Select Board took no position on it Nov. 2. Also ahead are $400,000 for the schools’ special education reserve, a $50,000 Carriage House study and $331,466 for permitting and budget software.
Nov. 2 showed how Winchester spends when the projects are ranked and the money is already in dedicated funds. The operating budget has neither.
Hughes reminded members that voters “spoke in March and said they didn’t want an override.”
Minutes later, School Committee Chair Timothy Matthews said one is “urgently needed.”
Senior has promised a revenue number in December. Members return at 7 p.m. Monday, Nov. 9, and again Nov. 12.
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.
