by John Osborn ·
Friday, January 16, 2026
Facing a looming $790,000 budget shortfall, the Harvard Finance Committee voted at its regular Tuesday afternoon meeting to request specific, prioritized lists of service reductions from town departments and the school district. The committee indicated that these lists will serve as a diagnostic tool to determine whether the town can function properly without a tax override and, if not, exactly how much additional revenue is required to save essential services.
The vote was unanimous and marks a pivot in a monthslong debate over the fiscal 2027 budget. At a strategic planning retreat last fall, the Select Board set balancing the budget with no override as a goal. Select Board Chair Kara Minar, who attended the meeting along with members SusanMary Redinger, Eve Wittenberg, and Ahmet Corapcioglu, confirmed that the board wanted to see a no-overide budget to fully understand the consequences of that path.
“Our guidance basically ... was to try our level best to get to a zero, no override situation,” Minar said, adding that the board needs to analyze “what the harm would be” to help decide which items were so essential that an overide to pay for them was justified.
The committee’s request relies on a traditional allocation formula used to split the town’s “spendable” revenue. Under this method, the town first deducts fixed costs—including debt payments and employee benefits—from the total revenue forecast. The remaining funds are then divided, with 65% allocated to the schools and 35% to municipal departments.
By this measure, town municipal departments are currently $452,000 over their allotment, while the schools are $335,000 over. Despite these gaps, committee members acknowledged that the budgets submitted by each department contain no “extras.” Instead, they represent level service—maintaining current operations—in the face of dramatic increases in fixed costs.
The shortfall estimate grew by $50,000 this week after Finance Director Jared Mullane factored in newly locked-in electricity rates and a contract for the new Department of Public Works director.
Finance Committee members spoke favorably of the school district’s efforts to proactively mitigate the shortfall. In a Jan. 12 joint meeting with the Select Board and FinCom, the schools presented a budget that had already identified significant efficiencies, including the elimination of six positions for a savings of $318,000. (See story on page 1)
Vikram Sampige noted that the school’s request represented only a 1.56% increase over last year’s request. Finance Committee Chair Mike Derse said, however, that many of the school’s initial cuts were “reasonable” and data-driven, such as reducing class sections due to lower enrollment, and had been made without a reduction in core service quality.
A primary driver of the shortfall is a projected 15% spike in health insurance costs. Mullane explained that this single line item effectively erased the town’s natural revenue growth allowed under state law.
“When we take health insurance off the top, that takes up all our 2.5% [tax] increase and all of our new growth,” Mullane noted.
Because fixed costs must be paid first, a “no-overide” scenario is essentially a level-funded budget, meaning departments must operate on the same dollar amount as last year despite rising costs. Mullane confirmed that because benefits and debt cannot be “level funded,” any savings must come directly from operational cuts. To keep budgets as lean as possible, Derse suggested the town should rely on Reserve Fund transfers for midyear “unknowns,” rather than building a cushion into departmental requests.
The committee’s consensus was that asking town departments and the schools what they would need to cut without an override was the only way for the town to determine its “least worst” path forward, even as Town Administrator Dan Nason warned that such reductions, if approved, would inevitably hit core services, including public safety.
“We’re going to lose services, we’re going to lose positions,” Nason said. “It’s going to make others in town nervous … because it’s going to affect their personal safety and emergency services response.”
Derse said that while the committee is following the Select Board’s mandate, the community must see the “threshold of pain” before the Annual Town Meeting and Town Election this spring.
“It’s a rallying call,” Derse said. “It’s difficult to rally behind ‘I want to pay for an override ... because I don’t want to lose stuff.’ That’s a lot harder to get behind than ‘We need an override because we want a fully funded police department.’”
The committee set a deadline of Friday, Jan. 23, for the town and school administrations to submit their prioritized lists of cuts. These will be reviewed at the committee’s Jan. 28 meeting to help determine the committee’s recommendation to the Select Board.