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Less than 24 hours after Marblehead voters approved the second-largest permanent tax increase in the 44-year history of Proposition 2½, the Select Board reorganized Wednesday night around a single message: the money is not a blank check.
The board unanimously elected Dan Fox chair. On a motion from new member Jim Zisson, it named Moses Grader vice chair.
Rossana Ferrante, elected Tuesday alongside top vote-getter Erin Noonan and sworn in before the meeting, took her seat without ceremony — just a round of congratulations from her new colleagues.
Fox extended that to every candidate on the ballot, winners and losers alike.
“It’s a lot to run and put yourself out there,” he said.
The numbers behind the night were stark. Voters approved a $15 million operating override 4,278 to 3,594, or 54.3% of the 7,872 votes cast on that question. They approved a $2,298,575 trash and recycling override 5,326 to 2,580, or 67.4% of the 7,906 votes cast on that question.
The combined $17.3 million in new permanent taxing capacity trails only the $23.25 million Brookline approved in May. Turnout reached 8,092 ballots — 47.5% of the town’s 17,040 registered voters, the highest for an annual town election in records dating to 2006.
Fox said he feels a lot of responsibility as a board member for the result.
He pointed to the memorandum of understanding with the School Committee and Finance Committee: quarterly financial reviews, no further override request at least through fiscal 2030. The board, he said, must “continue to cut costs and find efficiencies, not just rely on the taxpayers’ money,” and must keep “following what we said we would do.”
He called this year’s budget collaboration with the schools “very impressive” and said he wants to “cooperate closer with other boards.”
“The sooner we get on it, the better,” he said.
Zisson said a resident emailed asking for his reaction to the vote. His answer cut both ways.
“It’s a lot of money, but it’s a lot more responsibility,” he said.
The last operating override, in 2005, carried the town for 21 years. Zisson wants this one held to the same standard.
“We should really try to see how long we can stretch that oxygen tank,” he said, urging residents to start attending Finance Committee budget hearings now instead of waiting until the next budget season is underway.
He also pinned down the mechanics of the quarterly reviews, asking whether the full boards would attend. Fox said the memorandum calls for the three chairs, but the reports will go to everyone.
Grader was blunt about what changed Tuesday.
“We have been given some big checks,” he said.
Then he itemized them: $6.5 million for municipal services. $8.5 million for the schools. $2.3 million for trash collection.
Voters understand the roughly $7.7 million restoration piece, he said. The board owes them a better explanation of the remaining $9.6 million.
“I think we should really try to develop a plan around accountability,” he said, pushing for an 80-page budget document built to Government Finance Officers Association standards that links each department’s strategy to its numbers.
The “trust and confidence” voters showed, he said, is “something that we really have to live up to.”
Ferrante did not waste her first meeting easing in. Minutes after the board sketched its plans, the newest member pressed for specifics: when would the first quarterly review happen?
Early October, Fox said. A week or so after the books close.
She warned she would hold the board to it.
“I just want to make sure the dates don’t start slipping because of schedules,” she said. “I just want to make sure that everybody knows we are taking this very seriously.”
She also called for a communication plan, saying “the more clarity we can bring to the community as to what’s happening, I think the better.”
Noonan credited Finance Director Aleesha Benjamin, three years into the job, for the work behind the override’s phased design.
“She works really long hours and hard,” Noonan said. “I personally had a lot of phone calls and a lot of questions.”
Grader added that Benjamin was instrumental in the technology behind the town’s recent financial transparency.
Town Administrator Thatcher Kezer used the meeting — the 378th convening of the board, by his count — to tell the members exactly where they sit in town history.
Since Marblehead first elected selectmen in 1648, he said, 381 people have held the office, making it one of the oldest continuously running governments in North America.
He assigned each member a number. Grader is No. 375 — and, Kezer noted, the third Moses to serve. Noonan is No. 377. Fox is No. 379. Zisson is No. 380. Ferrante is No. 381.
He joked that they could order hats embossed with their numbers.
“It’s an incredible legacy,” Kezer said.
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