SWAMPSCOTT — The community gathered for the first night of Annual Town Meeting on Monday evening at Swampscott High School, with the majority of discussion being based around the town’s financial status.
Going into the meeting, the Finance Committee recommended a FY26 budget for general fund expenditures that is increasing by $3.4 million or 4.9% over the FY25 budget, which will require the use of $2.1 million of the town’s excess levy capacity and up to $600,000 of free cash. Now, the town must navigate the challenge of providing an acceptable level of service for both town residents and the school system.
According to the 2025 Warrant Report, the School Department budget is increasing by $1.7 million (or 5.4%), and is mainly driven by compensation expenses. 81% of the school budget is compensation, with 74% of that compensation being for teachers, while the other 26% is for staff and administration. It was noted in the warrant report, to help express how the situation has worsened, that from FY23 to FY25, the amount of total staff has decreased from 389 FTEs (full-time employees) to 349. In FY26, the school staff count is at 349.2.
During the meeting, Select Board Chair Katie Phelan noted that the board motioned to amend Article 3 by a vote of 4-1 prior to Town Meeting on Monday evening.
Phelan noted that the recommendation was for Line 14 of the budget, Information Technology to be decreased by $3,000, with Line 16, Legal and Insurance, decreasing by $18,000. Also line 18, Human Resources Expenses, which will decrease by $1000. Lines 23 and 26 were also a part of Finance Committee Chair Eric Hartman’s amendment.
Phelan continued with line 27, Building Expense, decreasing by $500. Line 29, Health Expense, decreasing by $1000. She added that line 36, Cemetery Expense decreasing by $500, and that line 38, DPW Expense, decreasing by $11,500. Line 46, Fire Expense, decreasing by $3,700 — line 52, Library Expense, decreasing by $2,000 — with line 54, Swampscott Public Schools, increasing by $130,000.
“The Select Board has voted to amend the Finance Committee’s recommendation for 10 different lines,” Town Moderator Michael McClung clarified.
“The Select Board spent this last Wednesday and tonight’s meeting going through anywhere where possible decreases could be made to share the expense of the increase of the health insurance line item, which would have been $175,000 between the schools and the town,” Phelan said. “And, as requested, the following local tax estimates will be increased, and the expenses be decreased such that the Public Schools would not see a decrease of $130,000 in their budget.”
School Committee Chair Glenn Paster spoke to comment on the amendment.
“You’re right, what’s 130,000 on a 40 mil budget? It’s pennies… The unfortunate thing for us, is what you saw at the Select Board meeting was last minute, difficult cuts… we’ve taken our pennies, big ticket items, but we’ve also looked at every line item, and where we could take out, we have. We’ve already done that. The meetings were tense, disappointing, but at the end of the day, we had to live within a certain budget,” Paster said.
Paster continued, “This won’t happen due to the hard work of the Finance Committee and the Select Board — the challenge with the $130,000 is that we don’t have it — what that means to us is reduction to core staff. We don’t know who, but that’s what’s going to happen. Although I understand splitting the cost of health insurance, we split 25/75… I don’t know if those numbers are true.”
“We could make a really good guess… I’m here to tell you we’ve already done the dirty work. If the money isn’t returned to the school dept., There will be layoffs. We have nowhere else to go,” Paster added.
Superintendent of Schools Pamela Angelakis commented next. “There’s nothing left to cut… I appreciate the SB going line by line through the budget. We’ve already done that. We have gone line by line through our budget for 11 years — if you fully fund that one thirty, we still have a budget gap of 305,000 — that could change today if a special ed student comes in.”
School Committee member Amy O’Connor shared her thoughts.
“One of the things I want to raise about splitting the cost, so what we’re doing here is cutting based on what we understand is very conservative revenue generation… We don’t get that money back at the end of the year,” O’Connor said. “If that money came back to us the same way it came back to the town, we’d look at it a little differently.”
Finance Committee member Naomi Dreeben shared her perspective on the matter.
“We struggled with making the budget work, and the school department will be increasing by 5%, and all other departments are increasing less than 1%… If you keep making cuts, it’s really going to bleed, to keep the proportionality in front of all of us,” she said.
After the town voted 134 to 98, the motion was carried to amend Article 3.
