# Protection of persons & property: what the town votes for it

One of twelve departments in the omnibus budget Town Meeting votes each spring. [All twelve together](/analysis/town-budgets).

## What it is

Police, Fire, Radio Watch and the inspectors — wiring, plumbing and gas, building, sealer of weights and measures — plus emergency management and animal control. The town prints it as `Protection`, and its contents page as `PROTECTION OF PERSONS & PROPERTY`. Each of Police, Fire, Radio Watch and Other Protection has its own printed subtotal beneath the group total.

## The department

| | FY2023 | FY2024 | FY2025 |
|---|---:|---:|---:|
| voted | $4,239,355 | $4,478,848 | $4,643,717 |
| a year | 4.7% |  |  |
| share of the budget | 10.5% |  |  |
| pull on total growth | +0.23 |  |  |

## Its lines, as printed

### FY2023

| line | label | voted |
|---|---|---:|
| | **total** | **$0** |

The page prints **$4,239,355** for this department. The lines above come to $0, a difference of -4239354.99.

### FY2024

| line | label | voted |
|---|---|---:|
|  | Protection | — |
| | **total** | **$0** |

The page prints **$4,478,848** for this department. The lines above come to $0, a difference of -4478848.28.

### FY2025

| line | label | voted |
|---|---|---:|
| | **total** | **$0** |

The page prints **$4,643,717** for this department. The lines above come to $0, a difference of -4643717.10.

## The people behind the money: the Fire Department

The Fire Department is the only part of this group that states its own strength, in the prose of its annual report, the same way every year.

![The Fire Department’s career firefighters as a rising line against the on-call roll drawn as a band, because the town states it as a range. The two move in opposite directions.](charts/town-personnel-fire.svg)

| fiscal year | career | on call |
|---|---:|---:|
| FY2017 | 5 | 40–45 |
| FY2018 | 7 | 40–45 |
| FY2019 | 7 | 40–45 |
| FY2020 | 7 | 40–45 |
| FY2021 | 8 | 40–45 |
| FY2022 | 10 | 30–35 |
| FY2023 | 10 | 30–35 |
| FY2024 | 10 | 30–35 |
| FY2025 | 10 | 30–35 |

Career firefighters went from 5 to 10 while the on-call roll fell from 40–45 to 30–35: the department grew and shrank at once, in different kinds of staff. Police states no strength at all, so the other half of this budget group has no published headcount to set beside its money.

## 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.