MARSHFIELD — The town is staring down a multi-million dollar deficit for fiscal year 2027, making level services impossible without an override. But a stalemate in the select board means residents might not get the option to vote on an override.
Recent resignations have left Marshfield with only two select board members and one part-time interim administrator. The two remaining selectmen are at odds on fundamental questions about the fiscal year 2027 budget: should voters get the choice of a full override to maintain level services?
The full override made it onto the town meeting warrant with a vote in favor from since-resigned Select Board Member Trish Simpson, but remaining members Eric Kelley and Stephen Darcy are still deadlocked over including it on the ballot.
Two resignations and a recall petition come as municipal costs soar and the first session of town meeting—split in two this year to accommodate for the town’s delayed budget proposals—approaches on April 27 and June 15.
The override question
Town Clerk Narice Casper said that overrides have to go through two rounds of votes: one at a town meeting and one in a special election. Scheduling a special election requires a vote by the select board, and Kelley has said that he is not in favor of calling a special election for the override. With the shrunk select board, Kelley’s single vote has the power to prevent residents from voting on an override, even with the option on the town meeting warrant, according to Casper.
Even if the town votes in favor of an override at town meeting, Casper and Town Counsel Bob Galvin said that voters cannot fund it without approval from a special election.
The town meeting warrant includes three fiscal year 2027 budget proposals: a budget with no overrides and wide service cuts, a budget with a $4 million partial override and lesser cuts, and a budget with a full $7 million override to reach level services. The select board unanimously voted to place both override options on the town meeting warrant.
Marshfield is facing an extreme deficit in fiscal year 2027: Town Accountant Meg LaMay said that total revenue that year is projected to increase by $2.2 million, while fixed expenses should go up $4.5 million, leaving the current deficit projection at $2.3 million.
Casper blamed the shortfall on decades of fiscal mismanagement.
“We’ve been paying the lowest amount on taxes as any other town in our quadrant for the last 30 years. All of that money we haven’t been putting into savings for our town,” she said. “We’ve all benefited from living in a town that has really low taxes for all of these years, and now it’s time to pay the piper. I don’t want to have to pay the piper, but I don’t really see a way out of it.”
School officials and employees have been some of the loudest advocates for a full override to maintain level services at Marshfield Public Schools. The school committee approved a fiscal year 2027 budget proposal of $63.6 million, a 5.57% increase over fiscal year 2026. From 2022 to 2025, the school department received yearly increases of around 3%, which Assistant Superintendent of Business and Finance Tom Miller said would be inadequate for fiscal year 2027 due to inflation and rising costs.
“While nobody likes paying taxes, taxes are an investment in your community and money that is paid to the town to provide services,” Darcy said. “And every investment, whether it's in the private sector or the public sector, is a trade off between the present and the future. And I think that the voters should have the right to decide if they feel that they'll receive a return on their investment and what level of investment they would like to make.”
Kelley said in an interview with the South Shore Times in February that the school department was not operating efficiently enough and, given the severity of the shortfall and the fact that the district’s enrollment has fallen by 400 students since fiscal year 2020, argued that the school department’s budget should not increase at all.
“I think $7 million is going to put a lot of people out of this town,” Kelley said in a previous meeting.
Kelley’s one vote has the power to block an override due to the sudden resignation of Trish Simpson from the select board in March, less than a year into her term. She announced her resignation the day after a contentious select board meeting that included the first presentation of the fiscal year 2027 budget proposals, which was supposed to happen in January to comply with the town charter.
Simpson told the South Shore Times after her announcement that she would remain on the board until a special election to replace her, but she has not attended a select board meeting since then.
The next day, part-time Interim Town Administrator Charlie Sumner submitted his own resignation. He had been working with another part-time interim administrator, Peter Morin, who remains in the position but only works 20 hours per week, Darcy said.
Because Marshfield presented its budget proposals so late, the select board voted to split town meeting into two sessions. The first will address non-budget business, and the second will seek approval for one of the three proposed operating budgets June 15.
School committee members launch recall petition
School committee members have consistently advocated for a full override to increase the school budget enough to maintain level services. But Chair Sean Costello and Vice Chair Lara Brait took it a step further when they filed an affidavit to recall Eric Kelley from the select board April 3.
To initiate a recall election, 15% of the registered voters in each of Marshfield’s seven precincts have to sign in support of the recall, Casper said. If that happens, the town would hold an election within 65 days to fill Kelley’s position, and Kelley would be able to run.
Casper said that Brait and Costello would have to submit their collected signatures by April 22. She estimated that 15% of registered voters in each precinct would equal roughly 3,500 people, and on April 10, a week after they filed the initial affidavit, they had submitted about 1,700 signatures.
“I'm sure there are a lot of people who don’t think that we should have an override,” Casper said. “But there are also a boatload of people who are really upset because he won’t give them the right to vote at the election. And I think that’s why [Brait and Costello] are having so much success.”
Darcy said that, if Kelley is recalled, the town should hold the election to fill his position at the same time as the election to fill Simpson’s position, saving the town money over scheduling two separate elections.
He advocated for holding that double election in late June, but Casper said that she would need confirmation that Kelley has been recalled by April 22 to then be able to schedule an election before the end of June. A June double special election only works if recall advocates collect enough signatures in the next two weeks.
The select board did not take a vote to schedule either election.
Costello signed in to comment during the public hearing on April 6, but Kelley refused, moving on to the next agenda item as Costello was next in line to speak. Kelley said at the beginning of the hearing that he would allot roughly 15 minutes to public comment with a maximum of two minutes per person, then ended the hearing after about 16 minutes.
Costello shared the comments he had prepared for the hearing on Facebook later that day.
“Mr. Chair, when you ran for this position, you did so while repeatedly saying that residents deserved more of a say in the decisions that impact our town,” he wrote. “But now Mr. Chair, you are denying people of the choice to vote on the very personal question of how to address our financial shortfall. You’ve become what you claimed to be running against. That’s why I agreed to place my name on this petition.”
Of the seven residents who spoke during the April 6 public hearing, two opposed the petition, and two more criticized the school committee’s conduct during this year’s budget process.
Brait and Costello signed the petition in their capacity as private citizens, not as elected officials.
The next steps
It remains to be seen whether residents will be able to vote on an override, even if the measure passes at town meeting. That depends on whether Eric Kelley will change his mind or stick to the line that he has been espousing for months: the right way to deal with rising costs is service cuts, not tax increases.
It also depends on the recall petition, and questions linger about the logistics necessary to recall and replace a select board member in the thick of budget season. If Brait and Costello collect enough signatures for a recall—which they are well on their way to doing—the town has to schedule a special election to fill Kelley’s seat. If Brait and Costello submit all of their signatures on their due date, April 24, and the town takes its full 65 days to schedule the election, then Kelley’s potential replacement would take office several months into fiscal year 2027, long after the budget must be decided.
Sarah Farris contributed to this reporting.
This is a developing story.
About the South Shore Times
The South Shore Times is an independent, locally-owned digital news platform, free to readers, that covers communities south of Boston. Our articles are written by South Shore reporters, not AI.
For more South Shore news, subscribe to our newsletter.