Great Barrington — The Selectboard and the Finance Committee held their first fiscal 2026 budget review meeting on Tuesday, February 11.
On January 31, Interim Town Manager Chris Rembold submitted a proposed town operating budget of $16.8 million, a $423,766 (2.6 percent) increase from this year’s fiscal budget.
At the time of this submission, however, the Berkshire Hills Regional School District had not yet submit its proposed budget. “[To formulate the draft fiscal 2026 budget], we had been using an estimated school budget of just a five percent increase, or a million dollar increase,” Rembold told the Selectboard and Finance Committee at the beginning of the February 11 meeting. “Unfortunately, the school draft budget came in $300,000 greater than what we expected.”
According to the Berkshire Hills Regional School District’s draft budget, available on the school district’s website, the required minimum local contribution requested by the school district for fiscal 2026 is approximately $9.17 million, a $575,677 (6.70 percent) increase from this fiscal year’s amount of $8.59 million.
Rembold said that the school district makes up 70 percent of the property tax bills in Great Barrington. “The school budget increase, along with our increasing debt service, insurance, and other fixed costs, has set us up to require a Proposition 2½ override for the first time ever,” Rembold said. “We can discuss that override process and the override amount that we might need once we’re further through this budget discussion and through this series of meetings, but you should keep the situation front of mind.”
Proposition 2½ is a state statute that limits tax levy increases.
While the town’s school budget is projected to increase substantially over this year’s budget, Rembold said that the town’s operating budget for fiscal 2026 is predicted to have a minimal increase from this year.
“We very nearly exceeded our annual levy limit in fiscal 2025,” Rembold said. “Since new growth was lower than we anticipated, one of our goals between [former Town Manager Mark Pruhenski and Finance Coordinator Allison Crespo] was to increase the room that we had under the levy limit. One of the main ways of doing that was to slow budget increases as dramatically as we could. We were successful in that effort.”
Rembold’s proposed town operating budget is about $16.8 million, a $423,766 (2.6 percent) increase from this year’s fiscal budget. “With that, we were estimating to have $100,000 under the levy limit,” Rembold said. “We were successful, but that was before the school budget draft came out.”
As for economic growth within the town, Rembold said they “conservatively estimate new growth on the low side.” “If it’s higher, then that is good,” he added. “It won’t be zero [percent growth]. We’ve had some innovations and new construction, and we’re happy about that. Last year, we were a bit stung that [economic growth] was lower than expected. The one thing we conservatively estimate is we do not count on the cannabis revenue, which has been decreasing in recent years. Over the last few years, the cannabis revenue alone has covered our debt service. If you look at the [cannabis revenue] totals that have come in, that’s been good for us, and that has shielded us from the situation that I think we’ll find ourselves in this year.”
“This year, and I think in years to come, our job is going to be extremely challenging, more challenging than ever,” Rembold said. “Capital needs will continue; school budget increases will continue; and we must fund staff that are essential services and emergency services. If we weren’t before, we certainly are at a point now where we will have to decide what is essential and what is not.”
“It’s much appreciated that the proposed increase to our general town budget is a very manageable 2.6 percent, especially compared to the increase last year,” Finance Committee Chair Philip Orenstein said. “That’s good news. But again, this outcome relies on a significant amount of nonrecurring, or, more simply stated, one-time revenue items. The biggest component of that is the $1.7 million of proceeds that we have from the GE Rest of River settlement. That will not be available to us next year, but it is very beneficial to us this year.”
There will be at least three more meetings in the budget-making process, including a meeting on Wednesday, February 12, at 6 p.m. “This year’s theme [for budget meetings] is going to be wants and needs,” said Selectboard Chair Steve Bannon. “We may want things, but do we need them? And what’s the effect it has on the budget? So very simply, it’s gonna be where we’re going to be looking at, we’re going to have to make some decisions, and they won’t always be easy. And there may be—it’s maybe the year that we take the silos down and look at different departments and compare them, but not competitively.”
At the February 11 budget meeting, both boards reviewed multiple budget presentations by department leaders.
There was a considerable discussion of a bilingual language stipend line item in the proposed budget for the town’s Human Resources Department. The proposed stipend for fiscal 2026 is $2,000, which is unchanged from this fiscal year. Rembold said that the stipend is for “an existing staff person or persons that are able to provide existing translation services.”
Human Resources Director Sophia Bletsos said the line stipend is for Spanish translation because “this is the primary alternative language in the area.” “The person who receives this stipend has helped immensely, not only with translation services for tax collection but also with some local investigations with the police department as well,” Bletsos said. “The services are needed in town.”
This did not sit well with Housatonic resident James Bailly, who criticized the line item. “I find that bilingual stipend completely offensive, and I think that’s pretty much going to get yourselves in a lot of trouble,” Bailly said.
Resident Michelle Loubert said she also has issues with the stipend. “This is [town] employees doing interpretations,” Loubert said. “What if you get in a situation where you have to be unbiased during an exchange? I too work for a public entity, and we don’t use employees to do our interpretations. We have an interpreter company who interprets for us, as well as another service where you dial in [via phone]. It comes in [far less than the stipend costs], and it’s also in multiple languages, not just Spanish. In our community where I am, it’s not just Spanish, but it’s also Russian and Mandarin. As a taxpayer, I’m not comfortable with this at all.”
The Selectboard and Finance Committee made no decisions regarding the proposed budget during the February 11 meeting.
Click here for more information on the proposed budget for fiscal 2026.
