ABINGTON — Oct. 19, 2026 — Abington’s town manager told the Select Board last Monday not to expect better than a level-funded fiscal 2028 budget and projected a potential $7.4 million deficit by fiscal 2032. The board also voted to let the town explore changing its employee health insurance provider and heard a consultant estimate that MWRA water could reach Abington in the mid-2030s.
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The warning came in Town Manager Michael Maresco’s State of the Town presentation as the fiscal 2028 budget process begins. Expenses are growing faster than revenue, creating a structural deficit that could reach $7.4 million by fiscal 2032 under the five-year projection, which the manager called an estimate subject to many variables.
The projection assumes health insurance and Plymouth County retirement costs each rise 10% a year, salaries 2.9%, other expenses 3.7% and schools 4%, against property tax growth of about 2.5% and new growth of $200,000 a year. Maresco said local aid rose only 1.8% with inflation near 5%.
He said a level-funded budget was the best outcome in view, with a worst case of level funding plus an additional 5% cut. It is too early for specifics, Maresco said, and the administration is studying how to level-fund without layoffs.
The presentation tied the town’s water shortage directly to revenue: without water there is no new growth, and commercial development is on hold. The developer buying the two vacant school buildings is worried about water and may back out, Maresco said. He said in his later report that he is working with Causeway Development on how water issues could affect development of the North and Center School.
Ryan Allgrove, a principal at APEX, presented a 2025 report on extending MWRA water to a consortium of South Shore towns, and disclosed working for Weymouth on that town’s MWRA project. Chair Paul Bunker said the board has no say over water decisions but wanted residents to see the presentation.
Weymouth’s pipeline from the MWRA system near the Blue Hills is targeted for completion in 2031, Allgrove said. Abington, Rockland, Hanover and Hingham remain in the consortium. A spur to the Abington-Rockland Joint Waterworks, mostly 12-inch pipe about a mile and a half long, would cost roughly $25 million including a pump station, within a $130 million, 7.6-mile regional scenario. Allgrove said no town has agreed to a cost split.
After Weymouth’s 5.5 million gallons a day, about 2 million gallons a day would remain at the connection, close to the 2.1 million gallon daily deficit projected for the systems studied, Allgrove said. The MWRA’s entrance-fee waiver, worth about $13 million for that volume, runs through 2027 for communities that make an earnest start, and the interbasin-transfer review under MEPA would take about two years.
And so two or three years of construction after that, that first gallon of water would flow. So you’re talking the mid 2030s. It’s not going to be next week.
— Ryan Allgrove, principal, APEX 8:43
Daniel Eddy said any solution will cost ratepayers more. The board took no action.
