By Dakota Antelman — [email protected]
The Concord Free Public Library would be closed Sundays beginning this summer under a new town budget plan unveiled to the Select Board.
The plan introduced last Monday also eliminates overtime for all departments except police, fire, and public works and trims 2.5 full-time equivalent positions from departments yet to be named.
The reductions follow increasingly urgent calls to rein in municipal spending and slow Concord’s rising tax rates. The trims won’t erase the town’s budget crunch, though. Parts of the budget remain unresolved.
Select Board member Wendy Rovelli said she expected “some pushback” on the library closures. “But it’s what we need to do,” she said.
Chief financial officer Anthony Ansaldi detailed the cuts alongside Town Manager Kerry Lafleur.
He said the reductions bring the town’s 2026 fiscal year figures in line with a Finance Committee guideline that recommended capping the budget increase at 2.85%.
Ansaldi did not say which jobs would be eliminated as part of the 2.5 FTE reduction. Speaking with The Concord Bridge after the meeting, Lafleur said she hopes the town could make cuts without layoffs by eliminating vacant positions or offering job transfers to current town employees.
At a Finance Committee meeting last Thursday night, after the February 14 print version of this article went to press, Ansaldi emphasized that the plan he presented is a draft version of the town’s budget. The final Town Manager’s budget is not due until the end of the month and he said “adjustments could be made.”
Library cuts
The Fiscal ’26 budget target is $33.7 million, $342,852 less than what town staff requested before FinCom set its guideline.
“I know this is hard for everybody,” Select Board chair Mary Hartman said after Ansaldi’s presentation.
Employees are paid overtime to keep the library’s main branch open from 1-5 p.m. on Sundays. With overtime eliminated beginning July 1, the library would lose its Sunday hours. Ansaldi said the closures would save $44,000.
Library director Emily Smith said overtime pay on Sundays was a new provision in a union contract for library workers that took effect last summer.
New controls
Other cuts include a reduction in firefighter overtime. The Human Resources Department would lose a temporary consultant. Come July, only public safety personnel, the director of public works, and other staff with contractual guarantees would be allowed to use “take-home” town vehicles.
The town would also enact new hiring controls. Ansaldi described the measures as a “hiring pause” under which a department head must present a job opening to him, Lafleur, and Assistant Town Manager Jessica Porter before advertising the position. The panel would decide whether the job is necessary and financially sustainable.
Consolidation savings
Ansaldi recommended evaluating every town department over the next year “to determine if they are staffed appropriately.”
He also said the town should consider consolidating services with the Concord Public Schools.
Those changes wouldn’t kick in until the 2027 fiscal year, but Ansaldi said the town and CPS could save money by aligning their financial software and sharing costs in facilities and IT line items. A combined human resources department could be another money saver.
School Committee member Tracey Marano was watching Monday’s meeting remotely and said some of the consolidation talk came as a surprise.
Lafleur reiterated that “any move in this direction is going to take a lot of thought and talk and negotiation.”
Task force appointments
The Fiscal ’26 operating budget must pass at June’s Town Meeting to take effect.
In the meantime, the town’s new Tax Relief Evaluation Task Force will get to work following Monday’s Select Board vote to appoint seven members.
The board tasked the group with evaluating Concord’s residential tax exemption and other tax relief options. Nominations earlier this month sparked debate over the Select Board’s process of choosing task force and committee members, but Monday’s vote to appoint was unanimous.
Select Board members will discuss changes to their appointment policy on March 3.
