Sudbury, MA

The short version:

• The committee is planning for a possible FY2028 override and has joined a new town-wide budget committee to study it – though members said the drivers aren’t yet clear and no override figure has been proposed.
• Members flagged an open question – how the outgoing superintendent’s buyout will be paid – and a long-standing difficulty getting clear visibility into how certain school funds move.
• A fall Special Town Meeting is possible but not yet planned; year-end free cash is again running high.

The Sudbury Finance Committee met for about 90 minutes on June 11, its first meeting since the May Annual and Special Town Meetings. Short a quorum early, it tabled its reorganization and spent the night reviewing the past budget year and looking ahead to a fiscal year 2028 that several members expect to be difficult, and to likely require an override they said they could not yet fully explain.

A likely override, drivers still unclear. “I have a sense there’s going to be an override, but I don’t really know what’s driving it,” one member said (SudburyTV 23:15). The town has formed a new FY2028 budget committee – spanning the SPS and LS School Committees, the Select Board, the administration, and the Finance Committee – to study the budget and any override now rather than waiting for the fall (SudburyTV 25:01). The discussion follows a spring in which an alleged “$9 million override” was a flashpoint: in March the Sudbury Weekly called residents’ override warnings inaccurate, and town officials have said no override amount has been formally proposed.

Paying for the superintendent’s buyout. Members flagged an unresolved question about the cost of Brad Crozier’s departure: the buyout is “pending,” and “how that will be paid for” is not yet clear (SudburyTV 9:40). They expected it would be absorbed within the school budget, possibly through routine special-education “circuit-breaker” reimbursements and prepaid expenses. One member, noting that “we always hear that they are as transparent as they’ve ever been,” still said the committee has for years been unable to follow such transfers: “I cannot trace the money” (SudburyTV 11:12). They plan to have the district walk them through the numbers this summer.

Also at the meeting. The finance director said a fall Special Town Meeting is possible but unplanned, with the Select Board due to decide by late July (SudburyTV 7:54). On year-end finances, members noted large tax-title recoveries and a strong free-cash position – possibly near last year’s $9 million – alongside a roughly $160,000 snow-and-ice deficit carried into the FY2027 tax rate (SudburyTV 52:49). Members also weighed examining sidewalk funding and reviewed the state’s DLS financial-management report, which flagged no problems.