MARBLEHEAD— The Marblehead Select Board wrestled with how to close a major budget gap Wednesday night, debating whether to impose a trash fee, reduce school funding, and pursue an override rather than make deep cuts to town services.
The Board said the community is facing a roughly $7 million deficit, including about $5 million on the municipal side and $2 million on the school side.
Officials said one scenario would force layoffs and service cuts so severe that they viewed it as unworkable.
“So, where do we start? After the state of town, we had a $7 million deficit,” Chair Dan Fox said. Under one option, officials said the town could lose about 56 employees, or about 30% of its municipal workforce.
“When we were faced with this challenge of the college with $5 million that ended up with approximately 56 town employees,” he said. “That’s a 30% decrease.”
Officials said that the level of reduction would hit nearly every corner of town government, including public safety, public works, community development, and the library.
“So we looked at this. And the concept of losing 21%, basically one out of every five employees across this whole town, was something,” Fox said.
A central issue in the debate was whether Marblehead should move curbside trash pickup from the tax levy to a fee-based system. Officials said the town’s trash and recycling costs total a little more than $2 million and estimated that, spread across about 8,000 households, the cost would be about $255 per household per year.
“The costs that we have allocated, and which include curbside trash, disposal, and recycling services, are a little over 2 million,” he said. “We use a number of approximately 8000 households.”
Supporters of the idea said the fee would spare residents from much steeper reductions in services.
“I personally cannot go back to that place where we’re looking at losing 30% of our workforce,” Fox said.
Another board member argued the proposal was not a scare tactic but an attempt to show the consequences of inaction.
“This is agonizing,” member Erin Noonan said. “I think the idea that these are, we are employing scare tactics or cherry picking a strategic thing, because we will have an agenda about what we want, I mean, and it couldn’t be farther from the truth. These are not fabricated numbers.”
She said the town has already made repeated cuts over several years and has few options left.
“There’s only so many buckets and levers we can pull to get $7 million,” she said.
Still, not everyone was ready to embrace the trash fee proposal.
“I don’t think the trash fee situation has been studied enough by this point,” Member Jim Zisson said, adding that the matter remained “extremely complex.”
He said residents were already reacting strongly to the possibility of losing services such as the library, parks maintenance, and transportation for older adults.
“When I left here last week, it was late, I didn’t even open my front door, and my wife says, ‘You’re not gonna close the library.’ Am I going to drive by Seaside next summer and see three feet of grass? No, we have elderly people not getting to the doctor’s appointments,’” Zisson said.
Other board members countered that the town had done extensive research and that Marblehead is out of step with many Massachusetts communities that already use fees, transfer stations, or private-hauler systems to fund waste collection.
“We have been considering this, trying to figure out solutions,” member Alex Singer said. “We can’t control the fact that we’ve run out of a contract. It was a great contract. We were very lucky. It’s ended. We can’t control that.”
Officials also voiced concern about reducing the Community Development Department, saying it could jeopardize grants and delay major projects tied to economic growth and infrastructure.
“If we completely decimate, like, that entire department, basically, and we don’t have any department head, my concern is we are now losing that economic growth opportunity,” she said.
The board also reviewed different forms of Proposition 2 1/2 overrides, including a single-question override, menu-style options, and tiered approaches. One official said the town may need to present voters with a clear restoration plan after years of relying on one-time measures.
“The most important thing is they understand why we’re here,” member Moses Grader said. “Why we’re here, and why we need this.”
He said, “We know exactly how we got into this conundrum, and we know exactly how to get out of it.”
The board then turned to how a potential Proposition 2½ override might be structured if it goes before voters.
Members discussed presenting residents with multiple options rather than a single tax increase, including a three-tier override proposal that would allow voters to decide how much funding the town should restore or expand.
Under the concept being discussed, Tier 1 would restore services cut under the balanced budget currently being drafted. Tier 2 would address projected cost increases and revenue shortfalls over the next several years. Tier 3 would go beyond restoring services and allow the town to expand programs beyond current levels.
“What we’re requesting are components for override scenarios,” Noonan said. “That’s what I proposed as our objective to come back with.”
Officials emphasized that the discussion was meant to give direction to staff rather than finalize an override proposal.
“Our objective just would be to clarify what it is we’re asking staff to do,” she said. “We need to go through and outline exactly what we need.”
She said the goal was to provide staff with a framework so they could return with clearer projections before the town meeting.
Board members also reviewed the timeline for upcoming budget decisions. They said staff will present a balanced departmental budget at an upcoming meeting, after which officials expect to review potential override scenarios before the town meeting.
Several members expressed support for giving voters multiple choices on the ballot.
“The more choice we can give them, probably the better,” Zisson said.
Another board member agreed, “I support opportunities,” Noonan said. “Public choices allow some flexibility.”
Still, not everyone agreed on the best structure. Grader said he preferred a simpler approach focused only on restoring services lost under the balanced budget.
“I’m in favor of a restoration override only for this year,” Grader said. “The objective of the override is to restore this year’s cuts that we would anticipate.”
Others cautioned that limiting the override to a single year might repeat problems seen in past budget cycles, when officials were criticized for not presenting longer-term financial plans.
“I think we need to look at a two- or three-year plan,” Singer said, noting the town could face similar budget pressures again if long-term costs are not addressed.
The discussion ended without a final decision, but board members indicated that on March 19, the Board will be voting on its proposed balanced budget.
