DUXBURY — September 14, 2026 — Duxbury expects about $3 million more in operating revenue next year, a 2.9 percent increase. Pensions will take roughly $700,000 of it, health insurance about $571,000 and new exempt debt service $245,000 — half the gain, before a single department asks for anything. Department heads have already filed $74 million in capital requests for the same year.
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Finance Director Mary MacKinnon put it plainly: “That $3 million is not going to go as far as we would like it to.”
The pension number moved against the town without warning. Plymouth County Retirement Association met in August and voted to stretch its funding schedule again — out to 2032, having already pushed it from 2029 to 2031 last year. It also backed off a discount rate MacKinnon described as aggressive for many years, and revised its salary-growth assumptions. Between them, those changes produce an increase of at least 9.75 percent in Duxbury’s assessment.
MacKinnon said full funding would eventually free several million dollars a year in budget capacity, and that every extension moves that further away.
Health insurance carries at least a 6 percent placeholder. The town is self-insured and will not know its real cost until renewal next spring. The debt figure is firmer: $245,000 more in fiscal 2028 for exempt debt on the DPW facility, the seawall project and the Alden feasibility study.
The forecast deliberately leaves out the largest question in front of the town. No provision is made for the Powder Point Bridge in any form — repair, rehabilitation or reconstruction — because, MacKinnon said, she has no idea which way the board will vote or when any of it would hit the budget. Nothing is assumed for Miramar or any other large 40B either, on the reasoning that such projects take years to move through permitting and may land outside the forecast window entirely.
What the town does rely on is its own residents. The tax levy funds 72.3 percent of a roughly $106 million general fund operating budget, and 96.5 percent of that levy is borne by residential taxpayers. State aid covers about 9 percent. Duxbury’s share of the state’s $6.7 billion Chapter 70 pool is 0.12 percent — and MacKinnon noted that 25 communities take two-thirds of all state aid, leaving the remaining 263 to divide the rest.
MacKinnon was careful to label the capital list raw. The $74 million in fiscal 2028 requests has not been prioritized, vetted or discussed with departments. “I think it goes without saying we are not going to be able to afford $74 million of requests next year,” she said, and asked the board to hold the number in mind while it makes the bigger decisions ahead.
