MARSHFIELD — September 28, 2026 — A preliminary five-year forecast presented Monday to a joint session of the Marshfield Select Board and School Committee projects a $2.765 million deficit in fiscal 2028 if school and town budgets each grow 2.5%. Under the revenue-sharing formula both boards signed, schools would get a 0.7% increase and town department budgets would have to shrink 3.7%.
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Select Board Chair Rick Smith called the session the first joint meeting of its kind between the two boards that he knew of. It was informational, and neither board voted on the forecasts.
Town Administrator Ted Langill, presenting the town forecast, called every figure very preliminary. It assumes $700,000 in new growth, down from the $900,000 estimate behind the fiscal 2027 levy, which the administrator said will likely come in lower. The levy would grow about $2.73 million, or 3.3%, in fiscal 2028 and about 3.3% a year after that. Local aid would rise 4.3% in fiscal 2028, helped by a final Chapter 70 figure about $400,000 above what the town budgeted, then about 2% a year, assuming the state holds its $100-per-student minimum aid commitment. Local receipts would grow 1.5% a year after a first-year decrease.
Costs rise faster. The town’s SSVT student assessment is projected to climb 39% in fiscal 2028 and 28% in fiscal 2029 as Marshfield adds about 30 students a year there, and the town’s share of debt service on the new building starts at $856,000 in fiscal 2028 and reaches $2.34 million in fiscal 2029. The forecast carries 9% annual pension increases and 8% annual health insurance increases; each 1% costs more than $100,000 for pensions and more than $93,000 for health care, the administrator said. Shared and fixed costs climb from $38.3 million to $41.4 million.
We’re looking at over $2.7 million shortfall with just 2.5% increases across the board, which isn’t a lot. I think you’ll see soon, even after the failed override, what it would take to fund level services in the schools is going to be more than that.
— Ted Langill, Town Administrator 23:14
The deficits start from budgets already reduced after the failed override and do not count the funding the override would have provided, Langill said. The memorandum of understanding the boards signed assigns schools 68.5% of revenue left after shared and fixed costs, which would give them $58.228 million in fiscal 2028.
The forecast leaves out new solar revenue. The administrator said $1 million is a good estimate, though the start year is unsettled. Assuming $1 million, Chair Rick Smith calculated that schools would see a 1.8% increase and town departments a 2.5% decrease. In a Facebook post after the meeting, Smith wrote that, counting forecast solar revenue, the town anticipates about $1.7 million in cuts in the coming year. The meeting’s slides, which leave out solar, show the shortfall growing every year to $6.7 million in fiscal 2032.
Langill also warned that free cash topped $6 million last year and the town will be lucky to see half that this year, because recent revenue projections left little margin.
Superintendent Patrick Sullivan opened the school forecast with the district’s staffing losses.
As we looked at five year projections for expenses, we had to note that the 95 positions that have been eliminated in Marshfield Public Schools over the last three years colors everything that we consider when we’re looking at our five year expenses.
— Patrick Sullivan, Superintendent 1:11:40
The district’s fiscal 2027 budget of $57,835,328 is $2.4 million below fiscal 2026’s $60.4 million. Its preliminary fiscal 2028 projection puts level service — holding current services after the cuts — at a 5.39% increase. Restoring what the district considers essential from its pre-cut service would add 4.3%, about $2.5 million, for 9.7% in all, a gap of almost $4.5 million against the 2% placeholder in the town’s first draft. Five of the district’s seven bargaining units have contracts up, and salary steps alone cost about half a million dollars before any cost-of-living raise.
