
At the end of the day: putting the question to voters costs the Town of Belmont nothing. Not giving the voters a choice to throw a lifeline to the Town, on the other hand, has very high costs associated with it.
With per pupil spending in Belmont already about $3,000 per student/per year below the State average per district ($12,700 in Belmont vs. $15,900 avg.), our public schools entered the pandemic stretched to the breaking point. Now we risk plunging into a full-blown fiscal crisis with layoffs of instructional staff, increased class sizes and cuts to supplies.
Even 14 years ago when I moved to town – let alone the Belmont of 30 or 40 years ago- a Jessie Bennett in Belmont simply would not have stood for election for Selectman, let alone win six precincts and come within 128 votes of winning it all. In that Belmont, nobody would have encouraged her to run and there would have been no infrastructure to carry her campaign to the finish line.