The three candidates running for the two available seats on the Select Board will be making their final efforts to reach voters over the weekend ahead of the April 14 town elections.
The sole incumbent, Cathy Dowd, has served on the board for three years and is in line to become chair for the next year if re-elected to a second three-year term. The challengers are Bill Dermody, whose family has been in Needham for three generations, and Rich Adduci, who moved to town in 2023.
As always, fiscal issues are front and center. This year they occur amid a statewide municipal election cycle that will feature more than 50 communities holding Proposition 2½ operational override elections — meaning residents are being asked to vote to raise their own real estate taxes or face cuts in municipal services.
Proposition 2½ caps how much new property tax revenue a municipality can raise each year at 2.5%. That amount can be supplemented by the “new growth” a community is able to generate. Those restrictions have become increasingly onerous during an extended period of relatively high inflation that averaged around 4.5% between 2021-2025.
There is a common theme in the communities seeking overrides of local officials citing inflation, rising health insurance costs, stagnant new growth and increased school spending requirements as outpacing those limits.
Needham has not held an operational override since 2014, when voters approved raising the overall levy by $1.5 million, largely to pay for an extended school day. An override is not imminent, but a debt exclusion override to support debt incurred for the Pollard Middle School is expected in November. That project is currently estimated to cost $336 million, with 20-25% potentially offset by Massachusetts School Building Authority reimbursements.
Candidates have been asked how the town’s fiscal policies should be managed in anticipation of that burden. All three agree conservative budgeting is undoubtedly necessary, but few specific cuts were recommended.
Both Dowd and Dermody said a prime focus of the Select Board should be to encourage new growth, especially commercial growth, to increase the overall tax levy without burdening residents who already pay about 88% of the total property tax levy.
“We’ve always had good financial planning here and we luckily have avoided the operational overrides,” said Dermody. “We’re going to have to look very closely at our priorities when we have those goal-setting meetings in August.
“The Town Manager builds it, but it’s really the Finance Committee’s budget. And luckily, we’ve always had a good FinCom who vets it very carefully.
“Hopefully we can increase the commercial base to help build that tax.”
Dowd offered a similar take.
“If you don’t have new growth when your costs are going up more than two and a half percent, you’ve got two choices: You either cut services or you have an operational override. I don’t like either of those options,” she said.
“And, if we do pass the Pollard override, I think the appetite for an operational override will be nil, right?”
“So, in my mind the key is to have new growth. New business growth is wonderful as much as you can attract it.”
Adduci suggested looking at surplus funds the town has on hand as a way to lessen the burden on property taxpayers he feels have been overtaxed.
“We carry a lot of surplus in our town,” he said. “We have lots of accounts with surplus in the seven, sometimes eight-digit category, yet our taxes continue to go up, and fees that we collect never seem to go away. Why can’t we look at that?”
This refers to the $13,121,971 total balance in the town’s various “stabilization funds,” which both FinCom Chair John Connelly and Finance Director Dave Davison view as a useful tool to smooth out spending and limit reliance on borrowing.
“I’m not saying they should be eliminated at all. That would not be responsible,” Adduci said.
“We do have a lot of these funds, and we should take a look at those funds and make sure that the amount of balance that we have in them, it makes sense for us because there is a chunk of money there.”
Where to cut?
According to Davison, 65.7% of the town’s general fund operating budget is dedicated to school spending — an area over which the Select Board has minimal control beyond the bottom line. That leaves the Select Board with fewer levers to pull to cut costs.
Asked about two big ticket items that have yet to be approved — the performance space in the Pollard plan (estimated at $10 million) and establishing a Quiet Zone (currently $7 million) — none of the candidates want to see them on the chopping block.
“I am planning to support it,” Dowd said of the Quiet Zone. “This is something that is a huge quality of life issue for people and so I don’t want to nickel and dime that. People have been waiting and we’re finally getting traction with the T and finally understanding what to do.”
Dermody also supports the Quiet Zone, saying delaying will only add to the cost. “I’m a big proponent of the longer you wait on things, the more expensive they’re going to become.”
Adduci has questioned why the Quiet Zone hasn’t already been established and said, “I’m a strong advocate for Quiet Zone, and I would work if I’m elected to advance that cause quickly,”
Adduci was non-committal on the Pollard performance space. “I don’t really have a position on the auditorium, honestly. I don’t know enough about the space, the utilization of the spaces we have, to know whether that auditorium is really required or not.”
Dowd and Dermody both said they support having the 750-seat auditorium as part of the overall Pollard plan.
Dowd did say she was open to staggering projects currently on the town’s capital plan to spread out the debt. “We have a long-term plan to redo DPW buildings. I hope it doesn’t have to wait. But if something has to wait, that may be waiting.”
Both Dowd and Dermody credited the FinCom with providing discipline that has obviated the need for the operational overrides that have been proliferating in other towns over the past few years.
As the chair of the committee that finalizes the budget, Connelly said he shares the view that new growth is key. Without it, he said, the town should proceed with great caution.
“The less new growth you have and the more new (town) projects you have, they kind of fight against each other,” he said. He also said the stabilization funds provide an important function that would be undercut if those funds were to be reduced.
Asked about the general state of the town finances, he said, “We’re OK, but we have lots of challenges.”
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