Hawley voters remedy winter road maintenance spending

Moderator Scott Purinton leads Hawley voters through a 22-minute Special Town Meeting on Monday. STAFF PHOTO/MADISON SCHOFIELD
Published: 06-24-2025 1:38 PM |
HAWLEY — Voters determined on the floor of Special Town Meeting Monday night that the best way to address an overspent Highway Department budget would be to rearrange some line items and transfer an additional $16,000 from the town’s free cash and General Stabilization Fund.
Thirteen residents escaped the heat and gathered in the air-conditioned Town Office on Pudding Hollow Road for a 22-minute discussion on how to address $76,341 in unanticipated expenses, including a $48,300 deficit in the Highway Department’s account for winter road maintenance.
“If you look at all the other line items in the Highway Department budget, we actually ran a surplus of $33,000,” Finance Committee Chair Lloyd Crawford said. “In previous years, we’ve been able to completely offset small road overages with surpluses from other parts of the Highway Department budget. We’re not able to do that this year.”
Crawford said the town had a few options on how to make up the deficit. It could use some of the town’s free cash, stabilization funds or unspent funds from some of the Highway Department’s other line items. Alternatively, the town could simply leave it to be added to the end-of-year recap sheet. He explained the state allows towns to overspend budgets for winter road maintenance and add it to residents’ tax bills in addition to the budgets approved by voters at Annual Town Meeting.
“If you can’t come up with the money through transfers and free cash or whatever, then it comes off the recap sheet, and so it automatically gets tacked onto the tax rate at the end,” Crawford said.
Residents and Finance Committee members discussed the pros and cons of each option, and their impacts on the tax rate and the town’s financial stability.
Town Treasurer Virginia Gabert said it’s generally a bad idea to use stabilization accounts — which are designed to be savings accounts for bigger one-time capital purchases — to cover gaps in operating budgets, and it is important to give residents the opportunity to voice how they would like to take care of the deficit before just adding the amount onto the tax bill.
Selectboard member Hussain Hamdan recommended the town combine the different options, and transfer $8,000 from the General Stabilization Fund, transfer $8,000 from free cash and cover the remaining $32,300 with the surplus in the other Highway Department accounts. He added that the town will need to reassess whether the winter road maintenance budget is adequate or if it will need to be increased in future fiscal years.
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“The fact of the matter is we have to assess next year whether this last one (the winter season) was an unusual event or if we’re just not budgeting enough, or maybe something in between, and then come up with a more appropriate figure going forward,” Hamdan said.
Voters approved amending the motion from transferring $48,300, as was written on the warrant, to align with Hamdan’s suggestion of using $8,000 from the General Stabilization Fund, $8,000 from free cash and $32,300 from other Highway Department line items. The amended article was approved unanimously.
Hawley voters also unanimously approved Articles 1 and 2 to transfer $3,041 to cover an extra delivery of propane and heating pellets, and $25,000 for vocational school tuition, as the town will be sending six students to Franklin County Technical School next school year, rather than the two that the town had originally budgeted for.
Reach Madison Schofield at 413-930-4579 or mschofield@recorder.com.