Ten questions people in Lunenburg actually ask about the school budget, each answered with a number and the arithmetic that produced it. No jargon, no adjectives, and nothing you have to take on trust — the sums are small enough to check.
Start here
The whole thing in four sentences
$930k
The schools need $930,273 more next year than the town can give them. That is the whole problem, in one number.
2.68%
The things schools buy get 5.18% more expensive each year. State law lets the town collect about 2.5% more each year. Nobody overspent — the two numbers are simply different.
$570k
That difference opens a brand new hole every year, of roughly $570,339 to $786,364, whether or not you closed the last one.
1 yr
So no single cut fixes this. Every answer in the table below — sports, fees, administrators, pay, insurance — buys one year at most, and then the question comes back larger.
If you only read one thing
Find the money
Everything below this asks what happens over six years, and that asks you to trust a projection — rates compounding out to FY33, which is not something you can check at a kitchen table. There is now a page that has no projection in it at all.
It asks one flat question — you have to find $930,273 next year; what does that take? — and answers it once for every lever anybody has proposed, with the division printed underneath. Nothing compounds. Nothing is a forecast.
The finding is not in any one lever. It is how many of them cannot reach the number at any price: administration, technology and all three fees at their absolute ceilings, all at once, come to $1,465,670 — and that ceiling does not grow from year to year. The hole does.
Every answer anyone has proposed to that $930,273, priced the same way: what it saves, whether that closes next year, and how long it lasts before the question comes back. Nothing on this list lasts more than one year on its own. Each row links to the arithmetic behind it.
Closing the gap and being a good idea are different questions, so they are kept in different columns. Whether an option closes FY28 is arithmetic and is printed plainly. The only color in the table is on the last column, which is what it costs the people it lands on.
They are grouped by who the money comes out of, because that is the choice actually being made. Every one of these takes it from somewhere — a family, a member of staff, a student, or a taxpayer — except the last group, which takes it from nobody and changes what the town is instead.
What you would do
Saves a year
Closes FY28?
Years it lasts
What it costs
Overhead is trimmedNo program ends and no job goes — but see what is actually in it
Town-changing · Nobody’s pay — but a development every 9 days forever, and business goes from 9% of the town’s value to 27%
“Years it lasts” assumes the saving is permanent and grows a little each year, because a job you never fill never gets its raise. The gap grows faster, from a much larger base — which is the reason the column reads the way it does, and the subject of the rest of this page.
Each row is priced on its own, and several can be done at once. The three fee rows together are worth $345,997 — 37% of next year’s hole, and the most the district can raise without the Town, a union or a ballot.
What actually works
The only two that fix it without cutting a service
Look again at how that table is grouped. Almost every row takes something from somebody — a program from students, pay from staff, a fee from a family — and buys about a year for it. Two are different in kind: no program ends, no job goes, and nothing a student touches is cut. They are also the only two still working the year after next. That is not the same as free, and neither card below pretends otherwise: an override raises the tax bill, development changes what the town is, and every route to cheaper insurance runs through somebody’s coverage. What none of them does is take something away from a classroom. Both are slow, which is exactly why neither gets raised at the meeting where next April has to be settled — and why next April will be settled out of the groups above instead. Everything below this is the working.
Fix one
Income that grows as fast as costs
The town controls exactly two of these. Both are permanent, which is the whole point — they raise the line the schools are funded from rather than paying for one more year off it. Neither cuts a service. The second one does raise the tax bill, and says by how much.
About 40 new commercial developments a year, every year
Real, slow, and worth starting now precisely because it is slow. It closes nothing next April — the buildings that pay FY28’s taxes would have to be standing today — and it asks the town to accept 346 new buildings in five years and a business share of the tax base going from 8.7% to 26.9%.
$193 on the average home for FY28, $781 to cover through FY32
The only answer available on the timescale the problem actually runs on, and the only one that needs no cut at all. It also has to be voted, and repeatedly, because the gap grows — and the town said no twice in 2026, though to questions several times larger than $193.
There is a third source and the town does not set it: Chapter 70 state aid, which this projection grows at 2.8% a year. Lunenburg can argue for more of it, but it cannot decide it.
Almost every large number in this budget is a person or a program. Cut it and something stops happening to a child. Health insurance is the biggest thing the district buys that is neither — it is a contract. $3,994,071 a year, rising 9%, the fastest-growing thing on the list. Which makes it the one place left to take real money out without taking anything away from a student.
What it is worth: hold the rise to 4% and next year’s hole falls from $930,273 to $729,320, FY32’s from $3,757,043 to $2,463,019 — $1,294,024 a year by then.
But nobody can simply decide the rise is 4%. The insurance market sets the premium. All the town can change is which plans it buys and who is in the pool — three ways to do that, each landing on somebody, none of them on a student.
85 employees are on Blue Care Elect — the broadest network. Blue Select costs $12,751 a year less at the family tier. Move everyone on the broadest plan and it is about $439,643 a year. What it costs: a narrower network — the saving is the narrower network. Your doctor may not be in it. Push it further and the only cheaper thing on offer is the $2,000 / $4,000 deductible plan, which moves the cost to whoever gets sick.
The one genuinely cheap lever, and the town has already pulled it: in March 2026 the School Committee approved a better opt-out — eligible after 1 year instead of 2, and the incentive raised from $2,000/$4,000 to $3,000/$6,000. The town stops paying a $23,770 premium and pays $4,650 instead. What it costs: very little, and that is also its limit — only people who already have coverage somewhere else can take it, and the district does not publish how many that is.
Not priced here, because the town has not put a number on it
The state’s Group Insurance Commission, or a regional collaborative. It is the standard Massachusetts move and it is the only one of the three that changes the rate rather than the bill. What it costs: local control of plan design, and everybody’s plan changes at once, not just the people who volunteer.
Two things govern all three. Plan design changes go through the Public Employee Committee under M.G.L. c.32B §§21–23, and a quarter of the first-year saving goes back to employees — already netted out of the figures above. And the Town, not the school district, owns the insurance group, so this is the one answer on the page the schools cannot reach by themselves.
Worth saying against our own model: 9% is an assumption, not a measurement. Lunenburg’s FY27 premiums actually rose 5.38%, while neighboring districts saw 8–14%. If the real number is nearer the low end, the gap on this page is smaller than shown — and so is everything this lever appears to save.
The bottom line. Next year will be settled with some combination of fees, savings and cuts, because that is all that can be arranged by April. Cutting every sport, every club, the whole front office of all four schools and 60% of the technology budget — all of it at once — buys the town two years. What decides whether this conversation is still happening in 2035 is whether the town spends the next decade doing the two slow things above. Nothing on the cut list is a strategy; it is a way of paying for the year in which no strategy was chosen.
Before any of the detail: of all the things the schools buy, which ones actually produce this? Each line is priced by holding it to the 2.5% the town may collect and re-running the whole projection — whatever drops out of the hole is what that line was putting into it. Size and blame turn out to have very little to do with each other. Present tense, deliberately: nobody decided any of this. No committee voted for health insurance to rise 9% a year.
Health insurance is
14.9% of what the schools buy
28% of next year’s hole
$4,019,071 of spending producing $261,240 of the problem — 1.9 times its weight. Hold it to 2.5% and next year’s hole is $669,033 instead of $930,273.
And for comparison, salaries
49.5% of what the schools buy
22% of next year’s hole
Payroll is 3.3 times larger than the insurance bill and contributes almost exactly the same amount of the gap. Every argument in this town is about the 49.5%. Almost none of it is about the 14.9%.
What the schools buy
Costs
Rises
Puts into the hole
Health insuranceA contract, set by the insurance market
$4,019,07114.9%
9.0%
$261,24028%
Special education, in districtSet by each child’s plan, and by the law
$5,466,20120.3%
6.5%
$217,97823%
SalariesBargained, three years at a time
$13,348,21649.5%
4.0%
$200,22322%
TransportationContracted, fuel-exposed
$1,053,3603.9%
6.0%
$36,8684%
UtilitiesMarket
$605,5112.2%
5.0%
$15,1382%
Everything elseThe genuinely discretionary part
$1,772,0536.6%
3.0%
$8,8601%
Out-of-district special educationSet by law and by which children enrol
$700,1422.6%
0.0%
-$17,504-2%
And the bottom of the table is the test of the whole page. If nothing the schools buy outran the 2.5% the town is allowed to collect — if every line held to the cap — next year’s hole would be $207,470 instead of $930,273: most of it gone, not all of it, and by FY32 it would be $580,757 to spare instead of $3,757,043 short. Almost all of the gap is the distance between one number the state fixed in 1980 and seven numbers nobody in Lunenburg gets to set.
Each line is priced on its own, so the contributions do not add to exactly 100% — holding two things at once is worth slightly less than the two separately, because the projection compounds. The ranking and the size of the differences are unaffected.
One of these seven is different from the other six: the salary line is the only one set by people in a room, three years at a time. That makes it the only one it is fair to ask a backwards question about, and the last section on this page does.
The pattern
What the hole looks like for the next six years
Two numbers get called “the gap” and they are not the same. The right-hand column is the part that is new that year. The left-hand column is the running total — how much more the schools need than today’s revenue provides, with every earlier year included.
Year
Running total needed
New that year
FY28
$930,273
+$930,273
FY29
$1,530,474
+$570,339
FY30
$2,197,945
+$618,672
FY31
$2,938,165
+$670,594
FY32
$3,757,043
+$726,388
FY33
$4,660,955
+$786,364
Read it this way: if the town found $930,273 of permanent new money for FY28 and never had to find another dollar, it would still be $570,339 short in FY29. The running total is not a debt that accumulates in a bank account — it is how far today’s revenue line has fallen behind by that year.
The questions
Answers, one at a time
01
Why is there a hole every single year?
◐Two rates
Because the town’s income and the schools’ costs grow at different speeds, and they have for a long time. Nothing was mismanaged. These are just two numbers that were never going to meet.
What schools buy costs more each year
5.18%
What the town is allowed to collect grows
2.5%
Short, on every dollar, every year
2.68 cents
Health insurance rises 9% a year, out-of-district special education 0%, buses 6%, salaries 4%. The only thing on the list that grows slower than the town’s income is “everything else” at 3%, and it is the smallest piece of the budget.
And the year after: Neither number changes because you closed last year’s hole. So the same gap between them opens a new one, and it is slightly bigger because both sides are bigger.
02
Will this happen again next year? And the year after?
✕Yes, bigger
Yes, both years, and every year after that. A new hole of roughly $570,339 to $786,364 opens each year on top of whatever was already fixed.
New hole opening in FY28
$930,273
New hole opening in FY29
$570,339
New hole opening in FY30
$618,672
New hole opening in FY31
$670,594
Total needed by FY31, over today's revenue
$2,938,165
And the year after: By FY32 the schools need $3,757,043 a year more than today’s revenue provides — more than five times next year’s number. This is the single most important fact on the page.
03
Will cutting sports, clubs, band and art close it?
✕No
No — not even for one year. Cutting every sport, every club, the whole high school band and chorus, and all art and music supplies saves $376,207. Next year’s hole is $930,273. You would still be $554,066 short, with nothing left to cut.
Every sport still being paid for, and its coaches
$217,908
The high school band and chorus
$72,440
Art supplies, all four schools
$30,685
Putting the high school music teacher back to full time
$26,370
Instruments, sheet music, repairs
$17,073
Every club and after-school advisor
$11,731
Everything, cut
$376,207
Next year's hole
$930,273
Still short
$554,066
Athletics as a whole costs $466,244, but the adopted FY27 budget already cut $233,922 of it — the buses, half the trainer, the middle school and freshman teams, and part of the coaching stipends. Only what the town is still paying for can be saved. The district also does not publish whether these figures are before or after the fees families already pay, which would make the saving smaller, not larger.
And the year after: Worse. FY29 needs $1,530,474, and the extracurriculars are already gone — you cannot cut them twice. Everything after this comes out of classrooms.
04
Can raising fees make these things pay for themselves?
◐Sports yes, buses no
Sometimes — and this is the one lever the School Committee can pull on its own, without the Town, a union or a ballot. But the answer is completely different for each thing. Sports can reach self-funding, at $960 a season. Band, music and clubs can too on paper, at $465. Buses cannot, at any price — not at $1,000 a rider, not at $5,000.
Athletics
Every sport, its coaches, the trainer and the buses
Pays for itself at $960
The whole bar is the $345,458 a year this costs to run. Who pays it:
Fees today, at $390$187,451 · 54%
What raising the fee to $960 adds$158,007 · 46%
Charging $960 covers the whole $345,458. Past that, raising the fee loses money: revenue peaks around $1,185 at $358,380, because families stop signing up faster than the price goes up.
$960 a season is roughly a 140% increase on a fee that just rose 60%, and it buys only the teams that survived — no full-time trainer, no restored coaching stipends, no middle school. Everything above $345,458 is unreachable at any price: revenue peaks near $1,185 at about $358,000. And the budgeted athletic director line is a $20,000 stipend that no longer reflects a full-time role, so even these targets are understated.
For comparison: Lunenburg $400 (was $250) · Duxbury $300 · Winchester $600 · Bridgewater-Raynham considered $950
Band, music and clubs
The high school music position, supplies, band transport and club advisors
Pays for itself at $465
The whole bar is the $106,244 a year this costs to run. Who pays it:
Fees today, at no fee we could confirm$0 · 0%
What raising the fee to $465 adds$106,244 · 100%
Charging $465 covers the whole $106,244. Past that, raising the fee loses money: revenue peaks around $835 at $132,812, because families stop signing up faster than the price goes up.
Participation is a placeholder: the district does not publish it. At $465 these programs self-fund on paper, but that is a steep charge for a club, and the students who quit first are the ones for whom the club is the reason they come to school.
For comparison: Ashburnham-Westminster collects $215,000/yr in student fees overall · The 375 payers behind this figure are an estimate; the district does not publish participation.
School buses
General education transport — special education transport cannot be charged for
Never pays for itself
The whole bar is the $1,053,360 a year this costs to run. Who pays it:
Fees today, at $180$64,260 · 6%
The most a higher fee could ever add$81,746 · 8%
What no fee can ever reach — the taxpayer pays this$907,354 · 86%
The ceiling is 14%. Revenue peaks near $715 a rider at $146,006 against $1,053,360 of cost, and past that higher fees push families into cars, which raises the cost per rider on the routes that are left. Special education transport — $649,953 of it — cannot be charged for at all.
Self-funding transport is not remotely reachable — general-education transport costs $1,053,360 and revenue peaks near $146,000. Special education transport ($649,953) cannot be charged for at all. Higher fees also push families into cars, which raises per-rider cost on the routes that remain.
For comparison: Common across Massachusetts at $200–$500 per rider, usually with a family cap · The 420 payers behind this figure are an estimate; the district does not publish participation.
Athletics — extra money a top fee would actually bring in
$158,007
Band, music and clubs — extra money a top fee would actually bring in
$106,244
School buses — extra money a top fee would actually bring in
$81,746
All three, at once, at the very top
$345,997
Next year's hole
$930,273
Share of it that fees can reach
37%
“Extra money” is the point of that table. Athletics fees already raise $187,451, so charging the self-funding $960 adds $158,007, not $345,458 — a fee cannot save what the town is not currently spending. Even so, fees are the largest thing on this page the district can do by itself, and they reach 37% of next year’s hole.
Two honest holes in this. The district does not publish how many students play, take band or ride the bus, so the payer counts behind the music and bus figures are estimates and are labeled as such. And: “WHY the fund collects more than the published fee schedule can explain. It took in $188,944 net in FY26, which is 45% above what the schedule and our sibling and waiver assumptions produce, and implies $287.82 per high school participation against a $250 first-child fee. A blended rate cannot exceed its top tier, so either participations are undercounted or there are surcharges outside any schedule we hold. The two imply different answers to what a fee rise is worth, so every fee figure here is a range rather than a number.” If the athletics budget is already net of fees, every athletics figure here is worth less than it looks. That is a question for the Business Manager.
And the year after: Fees are the one answer here that does not get worse next year on its own — but it does not get better either. Costs keep rising 4% a year and the fee has to rise with them, so self-funding is not a place you arrive at, it is a treadmill you get on.
05
Will cutting the “extra” administrators close it?
◐One year
For next year, yes — but only if “extra” means every single administrator and school secretary the law allows the town to remove, all at once. That is $736,468 across 14 budget lines and 10 jobs, and it closes FY28 with -$193,805 to spare. There is no smaller version of this that works.
Here is the actual list. Not “trim the administration” — these ten named jobs and four budget lines, all of them, in one year.
The 10 jobs it removes
10 full-time positions
Instructional Services Director (Curriculum)Curriculum, professional development and state testing, four schools$132,480
Business office clericalPayroll and accounts payable for roughly 250 employees$110,270
Human Resource SpecialistHiring, contracts, benefits, licensure — for the whole district$73,485
Special Education clericalIEP scheduling, notices and compliance paperwork$69,382
Primary School administrative secretaryThe Primary School has one office person. This is her.$62,066
Turkey Hill administrative secretaryTurkey Hill has one office person. This is her.$61,677
Middle School administrative secretaryThe middle school front office$31,764
High School administrative secretaryThe high school front office$31,764
Middle School clerk typistMiddle school attendance, scheduling and records$19,275
High School clerk typistHigh school attendance, scheduling, transcripts and records$19,275
The 4 lines that are not a job
Which is not the same as costing nobody anything — see below
Dues, meetings, postage, ads and office suppliesEvery school’s office supplies, plus dues, meetings, postage and ads$53,110
Transition / Leadership TeamA budgeted allowance for leadership transition work — not a person$32,001
Half the legal budgetMostly special education disputes and personnel matters$25,000
Stipends and secretarial overtimeRemote coordinator, curriculum leadership, $800 of overtime per office$14,919
What it cannot touch, because the state requires it
$1,380,442 that stays no matter what
High School principal and assistant principalOne line covering both posts. Every school must have a principal.$283,766
Turkey Hill principal and assistant principalOne line covering both posts. Already shares its assistant principal.$224,500
Primary School principal and assistant principalOne line covering both posts. Already shares its assistant principal.$218,279
Middle School principal and assistant principalOne line covering both posts. Every school must have a principal.$195,929
SuperintendentRequired by state law. A district without one is not a district.$178,350
Student Services Coordinator (Special Education)Massachusetts requires a district special education administrator$155,418
Business ManagerBooks, DESE filings and payroll. There is one.$124,200
Read together: that is every secretary and every clerk in all four schools, plus the district’s only human resources person, its only payroll clerk, its only special education clerk, and its curriculum director. There is no second one of any of them, and the work does not leave with the post — IEP deadlines, payroll and state reporting are legal obligations with penalties attached. They land on teachers and principals instead.
Everything the district spends on administration
$2,633,246
As a share of the school budget
9.9%
Of that, what the law lets the town remove
$736,468
Next year's hole
$930,273
Left over
-$193,805
The four lines that are not a job are not free either. Taking all of them saves $125,030, about 13% of the hole — but only the $53,110 of dues, postage, advertising and the four schools’ office supplies is genuinely invisible. $14,919 of it is stipends and overtime: the curriculum leadership work teachers are paid extra to do, and the hours the principals’ secretaries work beyond their day. That is a pay cut to named people; it just does not delete a position. And halving the legal budget is not a saving at all, it is a bet — legal spending here is mostly special education disputes and personnel matters, and the district does not control when either arrives. For scale on the whole question: DESE puts Lunenburg administration at $1,158,507 in FY24 — below every peer district except Ashburnham-Westminster.
And the year after: It runs out immediately. FY28 needs $1,530,474 and this saving is worth about $765,927 by then — $193,805 short, with no administration left to cut.
06
If the overpaid administrators take a pay cut, how deep does it go?
✕59% — once
Every administrator in the district — the superintendent, the business manager, the special education director, the curriculum director, the human resources specialist and all four principals’ offices — would have to take a 59% pay cut to close next year’s hole. Their nine budget lines come to $1,586,407 in total.
High School principal and assistant principal
$283,766
Turkey Hill principal and assistant principal
$224,500
Primary School principal and assistant principal
$218,279
Middle School principal and assistant principal
$195,929
Superintendent
$178,350
Student Services Coordinator (Special Education)
$155,418
Instructional Services Director (Curriculum)
$132,480
Business Manager
$124,200
Human Resource Specialist
$73,485
All administrator pay, together
$1,586,407
Pay cut that closes FY28
59%
Pay cut that closes FY29
93%
Pay cut that closes FY30
128%
Pay cut that closes FY31
165%
Two of these lines cover more than one person: each principal line includes that school’s assistant principal, and the district does not publish the split. The FY27 budget already removed one assistant principal, so the Primary School and Turkey Hill now share the one that is left.
And the year after: 93% in FY29, and 128% in FY30 — which is more than they are paid. By FY30 the town could pay every administrator in the district nothing at all and still not close the hole.
07
If teachers take a 5% pay cut, does that close it?
◐One year
Yes for next year, and only next year. A 5% cut across everyone who works in the schools saves $667,411, which covers the $930,273 hole with -$262,862 left over. Holding it closed means cutting deeper every single year.
Everyone the schools pay, in salary
$13,348,216
A 5% cut
$667,411
Cut that actually closes FY28
7.0%
Cut that actually closes FY29
11.0%
Cut that actually closes FY30
15.2%
The budget publishes one salary total, not a teachers-only line, so this is every employee — teachers, paras, custodians, secretaries and administrators alike. Teachers are most of it.
And nobody votes on this number. Pay is set by a bargained contract. The current teachers’ agreement runs July 2024 to June 30, 2027 and raised the salary scale 2.5%, then 4.0%, then 3.5% — 10.3% over three years. On top of that, a teacher who is not yet at the top moves up one step a year, worth about 3.3%. That is why the projection uses 4% for salaries rather than the 3.5% headline: the headline is the scale, and the people on it are climbing it at the same time.
A 5% cut is not a cut from nowhere — here is what it takes back
Where the salary scale sits, with FY24 — the year before this contract — set to 100.
FY24100.0
FY25102.5
FY26106.6
FY27110.3
−5%104.8
A 5% cut lands 1.7% below the FY26 scale and 4.8% above the FY24 one. So it gives back the whole of this year’s 3.5% raise and part of last year’s 4.0% — and still leaves the scale higher than it was before the contract began.
And what it is, in a paycheck.
A new teacher, bachelor’s, step 1$54,670 today−$2,734
Master’s, step 5$72,441 today−$3,622
Master’s, top of the scale$93,369 today−$4,668
Doctorate, top of the scale$110,287 today−$5,514
The question nobody is asking, which is worth more than this one
The teachers’ contract expires June 30, 2027 — so FY28 is the first year of an agreement that has not been negotiated yet. Nobody has to cut anyone’s pay for that number to move. It is simply not written down, and every half a percentage point of it is worth $66,741 against next year’s hole. Either side must give notice by November 1, 2026 to open the talks.
If the next contract settles at 0.0% — a total freeze, steps included
$396,344
If the next contract settles at 2.5% — matching what the town may collect
$730,050
If the next contract settles at 3.0%
$796,791
If the next contract settles at 3.5%
$863,532
If the next contract settles at 4.0% — what this tool assumes
$930,273
If the next contract settles at 5.0%
$1,063,755
Read the top line carefully, because it is the whole argument of this page in one row: if pay stopped rising altogether — no raise and no step — the schools would not have a shortfall at all, next year or for the five after it. That is not a proposal. It is a measurement of where the gap comes from. The projection already assumes the salary line grows 4%, which is $533,929 next year — more than the $930,273 hole itself. The gap is smaller than the raise.
The fair reading, which cuts both ways. Lunenburg’s settlements are ordinary — 2.5%, 4% and 3.5% is roughly inflation, and the neighboring districts settled in the same range. A settlement below inflation is a real pay cut, and the district competes for teachers with towns that are not offering one. But the town may only collect 2.5% more each year. A 2.5% revenue cap cannot fund an ordinary wage settlement, and no one at the bargaining table did anything wrong to arrive here.
And the year after: A 11.0% pay cut in FY29, and 15.2% in FY30. Not 5% again — deeper, because a pay cut does not slow down anything that is rising.
08
How much would we have to cut health insurance?
◐25% → 48.3%
You cannot really cut health insurance — the premium costs what it costs. All you can change is who pays it. Today the town pays 75% of the bill and the employee pays 25%. To close next year’s hole, the employee’s share has to rise to 48.3% — which costs a family on the broadest plan roughly $10,225 a year out of their pay.
What the schools spend on health insurance
$3,994,071
The employee pays this share of the premium today
25%
The employee would have to pay this share instead
48.3%
Moving 1% of the premium onto employees is worth
$53,313
Of which the schools keep (state law returns a quarter in year one)
$39,985
Cost to one family on the broadest plan, per year
$10,225
This is a pay cut with a different name, it is bargained with every union, and the Town — not the school district — owns the insurance group, so the schools cannot do it on their own. Health insurance is also the fastest-rising thing in the budget at 9% a year, which is why slowing it matters more than shifting it. That is the last section on this page.
And the year after: Further still, and there is a ceiling. Even at a 40% employee share — the most this tool models — the shift raises $599,769, which is $330,504 short of next year’s hole on its own.
09
How much new business do we have to build to close the gap?
✕~40 a year
There is good news first. Buildings stay on the tax roll, so the amount that closes next year is almost exactly the amount that holds the line for five years — $2,149,196 a year of new growth, against the $2,149,196 that closes FY28 alone. The bad news is the size of it: $121.56M of brand new business value, every year — about 40 typical developments a year, on top of what the town already expects.
New business value needed each year, above what the town already assumes
$121,556,335
Typical developments a year ($3.00M each)
40.5
Or, average Lunenburg businesses a year
134
All the business, industrial and equipment property the town has today
$212,343,140
So, as a share of that, added every year
57%
What that is, if you build it instead of adding it up
This is the one answer on the page that takes nothing from anybody’s pay, which is exactly why it needs saying out loud: it is not free, the price is just not money. Broken into the mix this tool uses for a typical development, 40 a year is 346 new buildings in five years — one opening every 9 days, without a gap, for as long as you want the schools funded this way.
346 buildings, in five years
Against the 234 commercial parcels the whole town has today
Small shop or office177
Restaurant101
Retail plaza23
Light industrial or warehouse13
Self-storage facility20
Solar array, about 5 MW12
And they all go in the same places
Commercial development clusters where municipal sewer reaches, which is why the same three corridors come up in every economic development conversation. There are three:
•Route 2A (Massachusetts Avenue)
•Route 13 (Chase Road)
•Leominster-Shirley Road and Route 70, near Fitchburg/Leominster sewer
346 buildings onto three roads, or the town pays to put sewer somewhere new first. And the biggest single thing that could shortcut the arithmetic — a distribution center — this tool already rules out: “no site, sewer or market for it”.
What the town would then be
Business is
8.7%
of the town’s value today
→
It becomes
26.9%
3.9× today’s commercial base
That is the honest cost of this column, and it is a real one. It is not a cut, nobody loses a job and no family pays more — but a town that triples its commercial base in five years is not the town people moved to, and that is a thing residents are entitled to weigh rather than have counted as zero. Worth saying plainly: the town has to decide it wants this, and the last measured year it went the other way — commercial +3.37%, industrial +16.98%, personal property +5.57%.
Two things make this harder than it sounds. First, only about 53 cents of each new tax dollar reaches the schools — the rest funds fire, police, roads and everything else the town does. Second, the town’s actual record runs the other way. The projection already assumes $400,000 of new growth a year, which is more than the town managed in FY2026; the figures above are on top of that. All in, it needs $2,149,196 of new growth every year — about 3.4 times its best year since FY2003 ($314,966) and 4.1 times its most recent ($518,650). Housing would do it too, on paper — roughly 235 new homes a year — except that homes send children, and the schools lose money on any home with more than 0.36 of a child in it.
And the year after: The same rate holds through FY32. To hold it for ten years it has to rise to about 40 developments a year. And none of it helps next April: the buildings that pay FY28’s taxes would have to be standing today.
10
Can we fund the schools and lower our tax bill at the same time?
✓Yes, for a while
Yes — and this is the least understood thing in the whole conversation. Two levers lower the average tax bill without taking a dollar from the schools. Together they are worth about $814 a year off a $7,444 bill. Funding next year’s school hole by townwide vote costs about $193. Do all three and the average homeowner pays roughly $621 a year less than today, with the schools whole.
Adopt the maximum split tax rate — homes pay $13.70 per $1,000 instead of $14.39
−$357
Let the excluded building debt roll off, and vote no new debt behind it
−$457
Relief, on the average home
−$814
Fund the FY28 school hole by townwide vote
+$193
Net, against today’s bill
−$621
The catches, in order. The split rate does not create money — it moves about $2,300 a year onto the average business, which are the same businesses the town is trying to attract. The excluded debt leaves the bill only when those projects are paid off and only if nothing replaces them; the town has not published the payoff schedule, so treat the timing as unknown. And the town has already voted down two override questions — $2.40M and $3.30M — by better than two to one, which is a far larger ask than the $193 above.
One note on “the rate”. Lunenburg’s tax rate has fallen every year since FY2019 — from $18.68 per $1,000 to $14.62 in FY2023, and $14.39 today. Bills went up anyway, from $5,770 to $6,874 to $7,444, because assessments rose faster than the rate fell. The rate is not the number that decides what you pay; the bill is. This tool holds no data on neighboring towns’ rates or bills, so it makes no comparison to them.
And the year after: The relief is a one-time step down; the school hole keeps growing into it. By FY32 funding the schools costs $781 and you are still $33 ahead. By FY33 you are back above today’s bill. So: a real reprieve of about five years, not a fix.
Looking backwards
How much of this was the raises?
Salaries put 22% of next year’s hole into it, and unlike the other six drivers, that one was decided — the scale rose 2.5%, 4.0%, 3.5% over the last three years, by agreement, in a room. So it is fair to ask: if those years had been smaller, where would the hole be now? A measurement, not a proposal — none of it can be undone, and the answer disappoints both of the loud positions.
Scale increase, FY25–FY27
Teacher payroll today
FY28 hole
FY32 hole
2.5%, 4.0%, 3.5% — what actually happened
$12,514,952
$930,273
$3,757,043
3.0% a year
$12,394,908
$805,427
$3,610,992
2.5% a year — the levy cap
$12,215,274
$618,608
$3,392,440
2.0% a year
$12,037,385
$433,603
$3,176,010
1.0% a year
$11,686,804
$68,999
$2,749,475
0.0% a year — no raise at all
$11,343,097
$288,456 to spare
$2,331,302
FY28’s hole would be
34% smaller
Held to the 2.5% the town may collect, the scale would be 2.4% lower today — $299,678 of payroll — and next year’s hole would be $618,608 instead of $930,273. Half the problem, gone.
But FY32’s would be only
10% smaller
The same decision, five years out: $3,392,440 against $3,757,043. Almost the whole problem is still there — and even three years of no raise at all leaves $2,331,302.
Why those two numbers differ is the answer. A smaller settlement is a level — it makes the payroll permanently lower, so it lifts every year at once. It is not a rate: it does not slow anything down. Health insurance still rises 9% a year, out-of-district special education 0%, and the levy is still capped at 2.5%. So restraint on pay buys a great deal next April and very little by FY32. Both of the things people say about this are half right: the last three settlements did make FY28 materially worse, and they are not why this keeps happening.
Teacher payroll here is $12,514,952 — the 94% of the salary line covered by the teachers’ agreement, summed from the FY27 budget’s own lines for teaching, special education, therapeutic services, library, guidance, psychology, social work, nursing and the athletic and activity stipends. Administrators, substitutes, paras and custodians bargain separately and settled at different numbers, so they are left alone here; applying the teachers’ percentages to all of payroll would overstate this by nearly half. Step and lane movement is also left alone, because it is built into the scale rather than negotiated in these three rounds.
And the reading that has to go with it. 2.5%, 4.0% and 3.5% is roughly inflation over those years, and the neighboring districts settled in the same range. The 2.5% column is not a mild alternative — it is three years of falling behind the cost of living, at $1,735 a year to a teacher in the middle of the scale, in a market where the next town over was not asking that. This is what the trade actually was, priced. It is not an argument that anybody chose wrong.
Every figure comes from the town’s published FY27 budget and tax records, run through the same model as the rest of this site. FY28 and later are projections, not published numbers.