HAWLEY — Residents will be asked to consider a $1.23 million total budget for fiscal year 2026 at Annual Town Meeting on Monday, May 12.

The meeting will begin at 7 p.m. at the Town Office, located at 8 Pudding Hollow Road, and will include votes on 27 warrant articles.

Article 3 on the warrant seeks voter approval for a $661,055 town operating budget for FY26. The budget represents a 8.63% increase from FY25 and includes $130,626 for general government, $32,352 for health and human services, a $11,193 assessment for services from the Franklin Regional Council of Governments, $52,324 for public safety, $308,360 for public works, and $126,200 for insurance and retirement benefits.

Administrative Assistant Tinky Weisblat said the increases to the budget were mostly due to increasing health insurance rates and rising costs of supplies that towns across the country are also facing, but residents should expect some changes to be made to the budget on the Town Meeting floor due to an unexpected increase in the number of students who will be attending Franklin County Technical School.

“There’s not a huge number of increases this year, but we’re gonna have more students going to tech than we expected,” Weisblat said. “We thought we were gonna have two, but we’re actually going to have five.”

For FY26, Hawley was expecting a 6.2% decrease in education expenses, and budgeted for assessments of $243,681 for the Mohawk Trail Regional School District, $256,079 for the Hawlemont Regional School District and $70,000 for Franklin Tech, making for a total of $569,760 in education costs.

Weisblat said the Finance Committee learned just this week that three more Hawley students would be attending Franklin Tech next school year, and committee members are revising the budget to accommodate an increased assessment. The Finance Committee will share a revised version of the budget and explain what changes need to be made at Annual Town Meeting.

“We absolutely love our kids and want them to be educated,” she said, “we just have to figure out how to pay for it.”

Articles 6 through 15 ask voters to appropriate an additional $25,185 outside of the regular operating budget. These articles entail adding money to existing accounts, such as $500 for the Town Building Repair and Maintenance Account, $1,000 for the Continuing Education for Town Officials Account, $3,500 for the Care of Cemeteries Account and $10,000 for the Highway Department Stabilization Account.

The next batch of articles will ask voters to approve appropriations from free cash. According to the state Department of Revenue, Hawley has $126,327 in free cash for FY25.

The town is asking for $45,000 to be transferred to the Highway Department Stabilization Fund, $25,000 to the Fire Department Stabilization Fund, $20,000 to the Vocational Stabilization Fund, and $14,000 for other reserve funds and grant match funds.

Other articles include:

■Allocating 1,324 for Hawley’s portion of a water heater replacement at Mohawk Trail Regional School.

■Accepting changes to the FRCOG charter.

To view the full warrant, visit townofhawley.com/event/annual-town-meeting-3.

Reach Madison Schofield at 413-930-4579 or mschofield@recorder.com.