Sunderland Town Meeting voters overwhelmingly support $800K override

SUNDERLAND — Residents gave strong support to an $800,000 override at the annual Town Meeting on Friday night, with only four of the approximately 200 voters opposing the measure.

For the override to go into effect and raise property taxes by 10.7% — 8.2% above the limit of 2.5% set by Proposition 2½ — voters must also vote in favor of the override through a corresponding ballot question at the May 2 election.

Before Friday’s vote, Finance Committee Chair Valerie Voorheis said a few months into the process of crafting the fiscal year 2027 budget, “It became clear that we were facing significant fiscal challenges that require more rigorous review.”

Across several joint meetings, the Select Board and Finance Committee members discussed cuts to shrink the initially projected $1.2 million deficit to the requested override amount of $800,000.

While answering questions from Town Meeting attendees, Darius Modestow, superintendent of the Frontier Regional and Union 38 school districts, attributed the increase in Sunderland Elementary School’s budget, a key contributor to the town’s FY27 budget jump, to an “unprecedented” number of new students with “high needs” that must be met under state law. According to Modestow, 53% of the school’s student population falls into this “high-needs” category, an increase of 17% over the last 10 years.

To scale back the initial 18.3% increase in the school’s budget to the 10% increase included in the override budget, the school administration plans to reduce the physical education teacher’s hours and combine the two kindergarten classes into one class and two fourth grade classes into one class, which would lead to one kindergarten teacher, one fourth grade teacher and an instructional assistant being cut.

A failed override would leave the school with a flat budget, or no increase, from the current fiscal year, requiring the elimination of art, music and the library, as well as a school adjustment counselor, an instructional assistant and a math interventionist, Modestow explained.

“It’s just the reality. There’s nowhere else to cut after that, unless we get rid of fourth grade and send them home for the year,” Modestow said. “We’ve already reduced things so far, that it would be bare bones.”

According to Modestow, a failed override would likely lead residents to leave the Sunderland Elementary school through School Choice, a program allowing students to attend public schools outside their home district, subject to available space and district participation. When residents “choice out,” the town of Sunderland must pay the chosen schools at least $5,000 per student along with the cost of required services to meet “high needs,” Modestow explained.

“People will walk and go to other schools and they will take their money with them,” Modestow said. “It gets into this slippery slope… We really do need to fund the base education of where we’re at in this budget.”

At the library, a failed override would threaten its certification through the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners and halt all programs paid for by the library, such as summer concerts, music classes, arts and crafts workshops, animal events, outdoor programs and guest lectures — “many of the things you have come to appreciate at the library,” said Lorin Starr, who serves on the Sunderland Public Library’s Board of Trustees.

The override budget also accounts for Sunderland’s share of the South County Senior Center’s FY27 budget request of $125,751, which includes the cost of relocating to the 12,150-square-foot office building at 112 Amherst Road.

When answering a resident’s question regarding discussions of Deerfield Town Hall as an alternative proposal for a new home for the senior center, Joyce Palmer-Fortune, chair of the senior center’s Board of Oversight and Whately Selectboard, said the Board of Oversight estimated that necessary renovations at the Deerfield Town Hall would cost $5 million. While the Deerfield Finance Committee recently proposed that a move into the 8 Conway St. would require only $300,000 of immediate renovations to the building, Palmer-Fortune said the Board of Oversight members believe this option is “not a good idea for our seniors.”

“With that context, we found the most cost-effective thing to do was to rent a building that is in really good shape, no deferred maintenance whatsoever,” Palmer-Fortune said in regard to the 112 Amherst Road proposal.

Palmer-Fortune encouraged attendees to consider the override and 112 Amherst Road proposal and “put it to the voters” at the May 2 election.

“Seniors, you show up — you show up when the schools need you, you show up when the highway department needs you, you show up when everyone needs you,” Palmer-Fortune said. “Here’s one time when I’m asking everybody to show up for the seniors.”

Former Finance Committee member Peter Gagarin urged residents to support the override budget, what he described as a “tight budget.”

“It’s something we need to do,” Gagarin said. “I hope that you and your friends will join me and many others here in voting next Saturday to pass it, because otherwise, it’s not going to be pretty.”

With only four votes opposed, the article for the override budget passed. After applause, many attendees in the crowd of about 200 left the meeting.

ADU amendments OK’s

Voters also passed several amendments to the town’s zoning bylaw for ADUs aimed to bring the bylaw into compliance with state law.

In 2024, Gov. Maura Healey signed the Affordable Homes Act into law — a move that made the construction of ADUs, also known as “in-law apartments,” with a gross floor area below half of the principal dwelling, “or 900 square feet, whichever is smaller” legal by right in single-family residential zones throughout the state.

Planning Board member David Dean said the amendments follow the state’s model bylaw “with a couple small exceptions.”

The amendment raises the 900 square feet cap to 950 square feet, a change that would make Sundeland eligible for state grant funding, Planning Board members explained at the Jan.13 public hearing for the bylaw amendments.

The Planning members also proposed removing the stipulation regarding “half the gross floor area” to simplify the process of measuring proposed ADU sites and “ease the burden on town administrative staff,” Dean said.

Larry and Phyllis Rivais proposed an amendment to the ADU article that would add the “half the gross floor area” qualifier into the bylaw.

Planning Board Chair Dana Roscoe said the board had already considered the residents’ points and “could not find a viable argument to favor this language.”

Residents voted down this amendment and passed the Planning Board’s bylaw changes included in the article.

Citizen’s petition fails

Before the meeting adjourned, residents voted against Will Sillin’s citizen’s petition requiring Select Board members to choose the rate for electricity supply with the lowest price per kilowatt hour under the Sunderland Community Choice Power Supply Program.

The Community Choice Power Supply Program refers to a municipal aggregation program that “enables local government to combine the purchasing power of its residents and businesses so that it can provide them with an alternative electricity supply,” according to the program’s website. Selectboard Chair Nathaniel Waring clarified that residents can opt in and out of the aggregation program’s selected supplier at any time.

Energy Committee member Aaron Falbel said the aggregation program formed after a survey by the committee found that 60% of respondents wanted their electricty to come from the renewable energy supplier with the cheapest rate.

According to Falbel, Sillin’s citizen’s petition follows a drop in Eversource’s rates below the rates of the Community Choice Power Supply Program’s current supplier.

“This is not town money that is being spent, and without some explicit authorization, it shouldn’t be the Selectboard’s choice to increase and direct private citizen spending,” Sillin said.

Falbel urged residents to vote against Sillin’s petition.

‘The mission of the energy committee itself is to guide the town toward a renewable energy future. If this petition were to pass, that would no longer be the case, because the cheapest default wouldn’t necessarily be the minimum renewable energy required by law,” Falbel said. “That’s not what the energy committee is set up to do, and that’s not what we interpreted the will of the town to be.”

Of the 18 articles discussed, the citizen’s petition marked the only article voted down at the town meeting.