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Rossana Ferrante said the reason people in Marblehead have been getting louder is that they don't feel heard. Select Board member Erin Noonan said voters should be more careful about where they get their information. Jenn Schaeffner called it "a genuine fiscal crossroads."
The three women are running for Select Board — Ferrante and Schaeffner challenging Noonan, the incumbent — and they spent the Marblehead League of Women Voters Candidates Night describing the same town in three different ways. School Committee candidates faced the same currents. Voters head to the polls June 9, when the ballot also carries a tiered, multi-year operating override and a separate trash question.
The override dominated. All three Select Board candidates said Marblehead must raise its tax levy. They differed on how far.
Noonan, who pushed during budget season for the phased structure now before voters, endorsed question three and said she would vote yes on all three override questions. She called her preferred option a restoration.
"It is not a bells and whistles override," she said. "It is what we have come to know as our town, and returns us to a level of services that we enjoyed right going into the pandemic." Without it, she warned, the town faces a 12 percent workforce reduction; she did not give the head count.
Ferrante backed tier two as the most pragmatic path. The middle option, she said, would let Marblehead stabilize while it looked for revenue beyond the property tax base. Quarterly financial reviews and accountable leadership would have to follow whichever option voters approved.
Where the town divides
Schaeffner stopped short of endorsing a tier. Raising the levy was imperative, she said, and she expected the separate trash question to pass. The three tiered questions were harder.
"People are concerned, they're very concerned about how we're going to continue to give the services that we're used to," she said, pointing to the burden on residents already squeezed by rising costs. Whichever way the vote went, the work of governing would still require collaboration with people on both sides.
Marblehead's political divide was its own subject of questioning. Asked whether the town is splitting into factions, Noonan blamed the information environment, urged residents to rely on credible sources and elected officials, and held up this year's Town Meeting as evidence Marblehead can still pull together. Ferrante framed division as a listening problem.
"People don't feel heard, and so when people don't feel heard, people get louder," she said, suggesting focus groups and standing committees built around dissenting views.
Schaeffner pointed to the long fight over 3A, the town's MBTA Communities zoning compliance, as her example of compromise. When Select Board members sat down with residents who had opposed the plan, she said, the two sides reached a result "that maybe not everybody loves, but that's typical and is a successful compromise."
All three said they would support the recently signed memorandum of understanding among the Finance Committee, School Committee and Select Board. Schaeffner described it as a more extensive version of an earlier agreement she said had not been followed. Noonan, who helped develop the document, called it a measure of accountability committing the boards to quarterly joint financial reviews and continued efficiency work. Ferrante answered in a word: "Absolutely."
Schools at the same crossroads
The School Committee race carried the same undertow. Sarah Fox, Anne Marie Jordan and Melissa Clucas were asked how they would sustain Marblehead's schools through tight budgets and uncertain state and federal funding. Their answers split on authority and approach.
Jordan, a teacher and administrator of more than 30 years, said the district needs the override. Creative budgeting, she said, is the school administration's job to bring to the School Committee. The bigger work, she said, is long-term planning around the demographic and enrollment shifts hitting districts statewide.
Clucas, a chief financial officer appointed to the committee in September, leaned on professional deference. The superintendent and administration team, she said, should drive program and staffing decisions; her role is communication. She pointed to a monthly schools newsletter she helped launch as evidence the committee is rebuilding trust. The two challenges she named were the complexity of special education mandates and an enrollment decline she said the district can only partly control.
Fox came at it differently. The Education Reform Act of 1993 gives the School Committee sole authority over how the budget is spent, she said, and the committee should use that authority through a zero-based budget. This year, she believed, the process broke down.
On advocacy, the candidates broke along the same lines. Fox pressed for stabilizing out-of-district special education transportation costs, which she said can rival tuition and are not covered by the state's Circuit Breaker reimbursement, and warned that the district's reliance on entitlement grants leaves it exposed. Jordan said the Education Reform Act of 1993, born from a class-action lawsuit by cities that could not raise enough revenue under Proposition 2 1/2, is overdue for an update. Clucas said the most useful advocacy starts at home, with plain communication that earns credibility to ask more of state and federal officials.
By the close, the contrast had hardened. Clucas and Jordan ran as a slate behind the current committee's direction; Fox ran against what she called a year of broken transparency. Noonan asked voters to send her back to finish work she helped start. Ferrante offered herself as a bridge between an institutional and a practical view of the town. Schaeffner pitched discipline and outreach to residents who feel shut out.
We covered this forum so readers could see the choices before the June 9 vote, not just the names on the ballot. Reporting like this takes time at meetings, careful editing and follow-up so the work stays free to read for the whole town. If the Indy is part of how you follow Marblehead, make your support count while this election coverage is still fresh. 🟦 Become a member here.
