By Dakota Antelman — [email protected]
Strict new spending guidelines mean staffing and service cuts are on the horizon for Concord, officials confirmed Monday.
Town Manager Kerry Lafleur said she and chief financial officer Anthony Ansaldi were not ready to outline individual cuts but said they would have more details “as soon as next week.”
“Departments are going to be at the bare bones,” Ansaldi said.
Ansaldi updated the Select Board as he and others work to follow a Finance Committee recommendation to cap municipal budget growth at 2.85% in the 2026 fiscal year.
As of Monday, officials had to trim roughly $700,000 from department requests to get the budget down to $33.7 million. Ansaldi said the town won’t meet the FinCom figure without “some staff reductions.”
A tighter budget will also leave less flexibility to pay for unbudgeted projects, such as this year’s lease for voting clickers at Town Meeting, Ansaldi said.
FinCom’s guideline was a compromise from an even more stringent preliminary figure. The committee also sought to limit school spending increases.
The town or schools could try to overrule FinCom and take their preferred budgets to Town Meeting. But officials have promised to meet the guidelines amid fears of a future override, in which town leaders would ask residents to approve a tax hike above the state’s annual limit.
Following Ansaldi’s presentation, Select Board member Mark Howell said the guideline is “substantially below inflation.”
“It is a guideline that invites some level of reduction,” he said.
The FinCom acknowledged as much in its discussions, with member Don Kupka saying in December that he knew the town couldn’t avoid an override without service cuts.
The town manager’s final Fiscal ’26 budget is due this month and will go before voters at Town Meeting in June.
