An analysis, written by this project

Budgets across town

What Town Meeting voted for each of the twelve town departments, and which of them actually move the total. It refuses the question it is most often asked — an omnibus budget cannot show a deficit, because a town may not vote one — and answers the useful version: ten of twelve departments grew faster than the levy cap, and the biggest line is not the fastest.

lunenburgbudgetproject.org — written by the Lunenburg Budget Project, an independent tool for residents. Not affiliated with the Town of Lunenburg, the School Committee or the school district. The document this page renders: /docs/analyses/town-budgets.md

Schools$25.1M
Protection of persons & property$4.6M
Employee benefits & reserves$4.3M
Maturing Debt & Interest$2.9M
Public Works$2.2M
General Government$2.2M
Facilities & Grounds$1.0M
Library$584k
Solid Waste & Recycling$470k
Assistance$341k
Health & Sanitation$118k
Central Purchasing$80k

The voted budget drawn as a town: schoolhouses, police cars, dump trucks, a town hall and a library, one icon for every $100,000, coloured by department.

57.1%

of the voted budget goes to Schools, the largest department

10 of 12

departments growing faster than the 2.5% the levy may rise by

$49,374,465

voted for FY2026 — a total with no department detail published

What this report counts

DOLLARS VOTED at Town Meeting, in the omnibus budget for the year ahead. Not what any department requested, not what it spent, and not a service level. A voted budget is already balanced, so it records who absorbed the pressure rather than who is short.

0157.1%of the voted budget, the school line

More than half the town budget is the schools, and four departments are five sixths of it

Most of what the town votes on is one department, and most of the rest is three.

Before any question about growth: this is how one voted budget divides between the twelve departments that share it. Schools takes 57.1% of the FY2025 voted budget. Adding Protection, employee benefits and debt service brings four departments to 84.1% of the whole. The largest department is 313 times the size of the smallest.

What it rests on The twelve group totals the FY2025 omnibus prints, as shares of the grand total on the same page.

What it does not show What any department buys with it, or how many people it employs.

0210 of 12departments

Ten of the twelve departments grew faster than the levy cap, not one of them

An argument about one department is an argument about part of the problem.

Every department in the voted budget except Central Purchasing and debt service outgrew the 2.5% the levy may rise by. Across the three years the town publishes department detail for, 10 of 12 departments grew faster than 2.5% a year. Only Central Purchasing, which is nearly flat, and maturing debt, which falls as bonds are paid off, did not. The budget rose 2.9% a year in total over the same period.

What it rests on The twelve group totals each omnibus prints, FY2023 against FY2025.

What it does not show Why any of them grew. An amount voted gives no reason for itself.

033.6%a year, the school line

The schools are the biggest line in the budget and not the fastest growing one

Size and growth are different questions and the school line answers them differently.

At 57.1% of the budget the school line dominates the total, but eight departments grew faster than it did. The school appropriation grew 3.6% a year across the three years, which is slower than eight of the eleven departments that grew at all. What grew fastest of the large lines is employee benefits and reserves — seven tenths of it group health insurance — at 12.7% a year.

What it rests on Total Schools against the other eleven group totals, FY2023 to FY2025.

What it does not show What the school line buys, or whether it kept buying the same things.

Those are the answers this report could reach from the documents behind it. If the one you came for is not among them, ask us — no name or email needed.

What Town Meeting voted for every department, and which departments move the total.

Who gets the money

Schools$25,127,554 · 57.1%
Protection of persons & property$4,643,717 · 10.5%
Employee benefits & reserves$4,293,123 · 9.8%
Maturing Debt & Interest$2,941,322 · 6.7%
Public Works$2,225,277 · 5.1%
General Government$2,177,964 · 4.9%
Facilities & Grounds$1,022,711 · 2.3%
Library$583,890 · 1.3%
Solid Waste & Recycling$469,775 · 1.1%
Assistance$340,898 · 0.8%
Health & Sanitation$117,819 · 0.3%
Central Purchasing$80,300 · 0.2%

A pie of the FY2025 voted budget split twelve ways. Schools is 57.1% of it; the next three are Protection of persons & property at 10.5%, Employee benefits & reserves at 9.8% and Maturing Debt & Interest at 6.7%; five departments are under two per cent each.

department	FY2025	share of the budget
Schools	$25,127,554	57.1%
Protection of persons & property	$4,643,717	10.5%
Employee benefits & reserves	$4,293,123	9.8%
Maturing Debt & Interest	$2,941,322	6.7%
Public Works	$2,225,277	5.1%
General Government	$2,177,964	4.9%
Facilities & Grounds	$1,022,711	2.3%
Library	$583,890	1.3%
Solid Waste & Recycling	$469,775	1.1%
Assistance	$340,898	0.8%
Health & Sanitation	$117,819	0.3%
Central Purchasing	$80,300	0.2%
all twelve	$44,024,349	100%

Schools is the largest department and Central Purchasing the smallest — 313 times the size, in the same budget.

How each department is growing

Schools

$25.1M · 3.6% a year

Protection of persons & property

$4.6M · 4.7% a year

Employee benefits & reserves

$4.3M · 12.7% a year

Maturing Debt & Interest

$2.9M · -19.1% a year

Public Works

$2.2M · 2.9% a year

General Government

$2.2M · 10.2% a year

Facilities & Grounds

$1.0M · 7.5% a year

Library

$584k · 8.8% a year

Solid Waste & Recycling

$470k · 22.6% a year

Assistance

$341k · 7.6% a year

Health & Sanitation

$118k · 8.9% a year

Central Purchasing

$80k · 1.6% a year

Twelve small panels, one per department, each showing its voted budget across FY2023, FY2024 and FY2025 on its own vertical scale. Eleven rise; only Maturing Debt & Interest falls.

Assistance
Central Purchasing
Employee benefits & reserves
Facilities & Grounds
General Government
Health & Sanitation
Library
Maturing Debt & Interest
Protection of persons & property
Public Works
Schools
Solid Waste & Recycling

Twelve lines on one dollar axis across three years. The school line runs far above the rest; ten departments are crowded near the floor.

Horizontal bars, one per department, of compound annual growth, with a dashed line at the 2.5% the levy may rise by. Ten of the twelve bars extend past it.

Which departments outgrow the levy cap

Diverging bars, one per department, ranked by how much of the budget’s growth each accounts for. Employee benefits & reserves runs furthest right at +1.00, ahead of Schools at +0.65; Maturing Debt & Interest is the only bar on the left, at -1.45.

Every department, every measure

department	FY2023	FY2024	FY2025	a year	share	above the cap
Employee benefits & reserves	$3,378,711	$3,968,170	$4,293,123	12.7%	9.8%	+$438,870/yr
Schools	$23,397,371	$24,082,518	$25,127,554	3.6%	57.1%	+$284,306/yr
General Government	$1,792,492	$1,974,322	$2,177,964	10.2%	4.9%	+$168,340/yr
Protection of persons & property	$4,239,355	$4,478,848	$4,643,717	4.7%	10.5%	+$100,330/yr
Solid Waste & Recycling	$312,634	$352,775	$469,775	22.6%	1.1%	+$94,340/yr
Facilities & Grounds	$884,566	$981,645	$1,022,711	7.5%	2.3%	+$51,396/yr
Library	$492,984	$539,126	$583,890	8.8%	1.3%	+$36,961/yr
Assistance	$294,404	$335,082	$340,898	7.6%	0.8%	+$17,409/yr
Public Works	$2,101,445	$2,168,288	$2,225,277	2.9%	5.1%	+$8,994/yr
Health & Sanitation	$99,260	$104,961	$117,819	8.9%	0.3%	+$7,597/yr
Central Purchasing	$77,800	$80,300	$80,300	1.6%	0.2%	−$728/yr
Maturing Debt & Interest	$4,497,723	$3,518,013	$2,941,322	-19.1%	6.7%	−$636,277/yr

above the cap is the department’s own money times how far its growth exceeds the 2.5% the levy may rise by — dollars a year, and the ranking this page uses, because neither size nor rate means anything alone. The twelve net to $571,540 a year.

The voted total, FY2012 to FY2026

One column per fiscal year from FY2012 to FY2026, rising from $26,582,152 to $49,374,465. The last column is drawn in amber because FY2026 is a total with no department table printed behind it.

fiscal year	voted	change
FY2012	$26,582,152	—
FY2013	$27,489,441	+3.4%
FY2014	$28,177,263	+2.5%
FY2015	$29,079,384	+3.2%
FY2016	$32,025,895	+10.1%
FY2017	$33,802,328	+5.5%
FY2018	$35,690,394	+5.6%
FY2019	$36,804,409	+3.1%
FY2020	$38,058,164	+3.4%
FY2021	$38,658,115	+1.6%
FY2022	$39,864,899	+3.1%
FY2023	$41,568,745	+4.3%
FY2024	$42,584,049	+2.4%
FY2025	$44,024,349	+3.4%
FY2026	$49,374,465	+12.2%

Does it add up

The twelve group totals against the grand total the same page prints.

fiscal year	twelve groups	printed total	difference
FY2023	$41,568,745	$41,568,745	-0.30
FY2024	$42,584,049	$42,584,049	nil
FY2025	$44,024,349	$44,024,349	nil

FY2023 is thirty cents short and the thirty cents are the town’s: it prints Total Health & Sanitation at $99,259.60 over five lines that come to $99,259.90, and foots its grand total on the correct figure rather than on the subtotal it printed.

What this cannot show

What any department ASKED for. The omnibus is what Town Meeting voted, which is already balanced — the difference between a request and a vote is where a cut lives, and the annual report prints only the second.
What was actually spent. Voted and spent are different quantities and rule 1 forbids mixing them in one calculation.
Whether any department reduced SERVICE. A department can hold its dollars and cut its hours, and a dollar figure will not say so.
Why any line moved. The omnibus states an amount and gives no reason for it, so every explanation of a movement here would be a hypothesis.
Anything about FY2026 below the total. The FY2025 annual report prints no department figures at all.
That growing faster than the levy cap is a problem. Proposition 2½ limits the LEVY, not the budget: the budget is the levy plus state aid, local receipts and transfers, and new growth raises the levy limit on top of the 2.5%. The cap is used here as a common reference point every board in town already uses — it is not a ceiling anybody breached.

Where it comes from

The FY2023, FY2024 and FY2025 omnibus budgets, department by department — The annual town reports for FY2022, FY2023 and FY2024 — each prints the omnibus for the year AHEAD, as voted at that spring’s Town Meeting. Every one of these reconciles against every total the table prints about itself. FY2023 and FY2024 land on the town’s own +$0.80, recorded as an attested reading rather than a defect in ours.
The voted total for every year from FY2012 to FY2025 — The GRAND TOTAL each annual report prints at the foot of its omnibus. A single printed figure per year. The department detail beneath it is only reconciled for the last three.
The FY2026 total — Article 10 of the 3 May 2025 Annual Town Meeting, printed as prose on page 140 of the FY2025 annual report. No department table is printed for FY2026 in any form. The five funding sources the article names sum to the total exactly, which is the only check available on it, and it passes.

Where this came from

Nothing on this page is an official document. It was written here, from documents the town and district published and from records obtained by request, and it has not been reviewed or endorsed by the Town of Lunenburg, the School Committee, the Finance Committee or Lunenburg Public Schools. The report index says the same thing at more length, and lists every analysis alongside the data underneath it.

This page renders the document itself, which is the source of truth: there is one copy of every sentence and every figure here, not a transcription of one.

Markdown1,275 words7 KBlast changed 2026-09-22sha256 af0a123dea820295…

Every other report

The budget feed — every board, everything about money →What the town is deciding now →The blog — one finding at a time, in two minutes →This week in town — meetings coming up, minutes and recordings just posted →The boards — each one, in one place →Meeting minutes — written from the recordings →Lunenburg by the numbers — who lives here →Lunenburg’s homes and the tax bill →Homes and students — the town builds, the schools do not grow →The boards, compared →Youth sports and the fields →The School Committee’s finances — every fund and line it owns →Parks & Recreation — the department, its fund, its sales, its grounds →Health insurance →Free cash — can it fill the gap? →Teacher contracts →School user and athletic fees →Extracurriculars — sports, music and clubs →Classroom positions and class size →Overrides →Commercial development and new growth →Special education — four reports →How many students one special education group may have →The circuit breaker — what the state reimburses for the costliest placements →What other districts spend, for each pupil →What the state requires us to spend — and where that puts us →Chapter 70 — the formula, and why it pays the floor →How Chapter 70 actually works, in eight steps →School staffing — did it go up, and over which years →Who works in each school →The paraprofessionals →What courses actually ran, subject by subject →AP exams — who sits them, in what, and how they score →The cut register — what was announced, and what shows →Funding that stopped →When a grant ends — who picks up the bill →Who is in the schools — enrolment, FY1994 to today →Which grades students leave in →Who leaves Lunenburg schools, and where they go →Monty Tech — the assessment, and what sets it →If students leave — what school choice would cost →What a family actually pays →What sports cost, and who pays →Health insurance — the cost outside the school budget →Budget against reported spending →

Every analysis this project has written, in one index, is at reports.