A Tiered Override Won In Melrose. What About Belmont?

If you were to point your finger at the one thing that fuels our struggles as a community, it would have to be Belmont’s longstanding structural budget deficit. Whether it is debates over development plans in Belmont Center to anger over strained town services (trash pickup?) and rising fees, the cause is the same: our operating revenues can’t keep pace with our expenses – salaries, healthcare, equipment, regulatory compliance. You name it.

83% of Our Revenue…With A Tight Cap

That gap has been a feature of Belmont’s finances for decades: growing even in times of prosperity. The root cause: our town’s heavy, heavy reliance on residential property taxes to fund operations. In 2025, for example, property taxes accounted for 83% of Belmont’s $158 million in General Fund revenue.

And that revenue stream is tightly capped by Massachusetts’ Proposition 2 1/2. This four-decade-old law limits the net growth in collected property taxes to 2.5% annually (absent new construction). This rate is well below historic rates of inflation. And then there are economic traumas like the Great Recession; COVID pandemic; Trump administration tariffs, and so on.

You don’t need a degree in economics to see that when revenues are capped below inflation while costs rise, a budget gap is the result. Recently, our town’s budget gap reached over $8.4 million. This was before voters, facing potential cuts to schools and services, passed our last override in April 2024, three years after rejecting a $6.4 million override in April 2021, which resulted in significant cuts to public schools, town services, and increased fees.

8 Belmont Overrides: 5 Yes, 3 No

The April, 2024 vote was the fifth successful Proposition 2 1/2 operational override passed by Belmont voters, totaling more than $20 million in added revenue. (Note: this does not include debt exclusion votes to fund capital projects like Belmont High School and the Library.) Another three Proposition 2 1/2 proposals, totaling close to $10 million have failed at the polls.

This isn’t a problem that’s unique to our town, either. Towns across the Bay State face the same paradox as they struggle to make ends meet. Even communities with large commercial tax bases, like Boston are struggling, as the COVID pandemic upended a decades-old office culture: leaving office buildings mostly empty and the revenues (and taxes) they generate in decline. That’s why you’re hearing Boston Mayor Michelle Wu joining a chorus of people calling for the repeal (or reform) of Proposition 2 1/2.

Repeal Prop 2 1/2…or Re-Think It?

My feeling is that the Massachusetts legislature repealing Proposition 2 1/2 is very unlikely to happen any time soon.

And, even if it were to happen, I’m not convinced that would solve any of the chronic problems we face. What it might do is create new problems for Massachusetts property owners, renters and communities, namely: exploding property tax rates in a state that already has one of the highest costs of living in the country. And that would widen gaps between affluent and economically challenged communities.

A better approach is for towns like ours to get smarter and more creative about how and when they pursue Prop 2 1/2 overrides.

Eyes on Melrose

An example of this can be seen in Melrose, where voters in November approved a $13.5 million Proposition 2½ override: the largest ever passed in the city by a large margin. The override followed an ballot measure in June, 2024, when a $7.7 million override failed at the polls.

According to CommonWealth Beacon, the override that passed provides stable funding for schools, police, fire departments, and public works, helping the city fill in budget deficits and avoid layoffs affecting the schools, Town and public safety.

An Override For How Much? Take Your Pick!

In Melrose – like Belmont – local advocacy was key to the measure’s success. Residents organized neighborhood forums, community meetings, and social media campaigns to educate voters about what was at stake. Also of interest: the structure of the ballot question itself.

Melrose’s ballot presented a distinctive three-tiered override, exercising a rarely-used component of Proposition 2 1/2 that allows towns to offer voters multiple override choices on a ballot, with the highest value tier to win a majority of YES votes the one that gets adopted — even if that is not the option that received the most YES votes.

We saw that in action in Melrose, where the least impactful question to taxpayers, 1C, passed by the largest margin: 58 percent to 41 percent. Question 1B, which sought $11.9 million more a year from taxpayers going forward, passed by a slightly smaller margin: 56 percent to 43 percent margin. And yet, Melrose got to adopt Question 1A, the tier that sought $13.5 million after it passed by a smaller 54 to 45 percent margin.

The benefit of a tiered override? As you can see from the sample ballot above, the different tiers lay out varying amounts of money and what can be funded with the added property tax revenue – from three school positions and road and sidewalk repair at the low end ($9.3 million) to 17 school hires, 9 public works and 2 police officers at the high end ($13.5 million).

Belmont’s leaders should take note, especially given the high likelihood of another Prop 2 1/2 override in the coming years. Our past overrides all followed the “all or nothing” approach: one ballot question and a single override amount put before voters. Essentially: agree to this amount, or get ready for the cuts.

“Belmont needs overrides just to keep the Town running, and asking the voters to invest in Belmont’s future has sometimes felt like a risky proposition that could lead to a failed override and catastrophic service cuts,” Select Board member Taylor Yates told Blogging Belmont.

Yates agrees: Belmont should consider Melrose’s approach in the future: offering different override amounts for voters to choose from, with each correlating with specific spending objectives: school and public safety hires, varying levels of commitment to sidewalk and road repair, reduced (or eliminated) activity fees for students – you name it.

“The multiple override strategy is worth observing and considering. Multiple override questions on the same ballot could be a way to give the voters a choice and let the power of democracy decide our future,” Yates said.

It’s Not Just The “What,” It’s The “When.”

The other big change in Melrose between 2024 and 2025? Turnout. Around 52% of Melrose’s registered voters participated in the November vote. That was a 17% jump over turnout in the 2024 special election, which took place in June. That’s a huge difference.

A driver of that increased turnout may be the Town’s decision to hold the override vote in November – a month when many residents are accustomed to going to the polls, and amid heightened national news coverage of elections in other states.

Whether November or another month, data from the Massachusetts Department of Revenue shows that the outcome an override vote correlates strongly with its timing – and that November is more hospitable to a YES vote than June, when Melrose held its failed 2024 override vote.

A look at Prop 2 1/2 override votes (note: not including debt exclusion votes) by month over the past three decades makes clear that when an override vote happens can have a big impact on the outcome – and that shunting a vote off to a special election in June is a recipe for defeat at the polls.

If At First You Don’t Succeed…

One final lesson in Melrose’s November override is the city’s rapid response to a failed override in June 2024. A little over a year later, the Town’s leadership had another ballot measure before voters – nearly twice the size, with voters OK’ing three separate override options – all asking for more money than the 2024 measure.

That stands in contrast to Belmont, where it took our town leaders three years from the failed April 2021 override to get another $8.4 million override on the ballot (and passed). That’s in part because of a long-standing conservative line of thinking here in Belmont that a “no” vote is a sign that voters believe town government is wasteful and has to ‘prove its worth’ by making cuts to win voters’ approval.

No. A failed override vote means only one thing: the campaign to pass it was unsuccessful, either for internal or external reasons (poor messaging, insufficient funding, public anger (as with COVID era school closings). In other words, if at first you don’t succeed: try, try again!

My advice for Belmont?

Obviously, Melrose and Belmont are different communities with different histories and realities. AND we have a lot in common. We’re two Boston suburbs of about 30,000 residents, 8-9 miles from downtown. Both have expensive housing and similar fiscal challenges. Property taxes make up 73% of Melrose’s budget, versus Belmont’s 83%. Melrose has put 7 operational overrides on the ballot since 1988, with three passing, compared to 8 and 5 in Belmont

That’s why Melrose’s November override is something we should pay attention to. Successful campaigning and dire consequences aside, the structure and timing of the ballot measure could greatly increase our chances of passing more frequent overrides to keep our town’s finances in order.

“The good news is that other Towns are running the experiment for us and we have 2-3 years to watch how the elections and their results pan out,” said Select Board member Yates.