Maynard's FY26 budget proposal cuts reserves, falls $1.4M short of school request

MAYNARD -- January 21, 2025, Maynard's Select Board opened its FY26 budget season facing a structural gap, water infrastructure emergencies, and a looming trash funding overhaul. Town Administrator Gregory Johnson presented a recommended budget that gives Maynard schools $572,000 more than the current year, a 2.5 percent increase, but leaves the School Department $1.4 million below its request, while also cutting the reserve fund from $250,000 to $175,000, the first such reduction Johnson has ever proposed. His most significant recommendation calls for fully accelerating the town's solid waste enterprise fund, removing roughly $500,000 in annual trash sticker revenue from the general fund and shifting the entire cost of trash and recycling, estimated at roughly $800,000 a year, to a new quarterly billing system approved at last year's Annual Town Meeting, a departure from the phased rollout the Solid Waste and Recycling Task Force has been planning. The board unanimously approved $434,000 in public works change orders, including $239,450 for emergency electrical repairs at the Well 4A treatment facility, which Director of Public Works Justin DeMarco said has been "running on a generator off trailer" for weeks after a surge destroyed a 50-year-old underground power line, and a rat chewed through newly installed fiber optic cables in the same system. Town Counsel Lisa Mead briefed the board on Proposition 2 1/2 override mechanics, noting only the Select Board can place such a question on the ballot and that specific override questions historically outperform general ones at the polls.