HADLEY — Revising the senior overlay district to encourage more 55-and-over housing developments on Route 9, protecting in perpetuity almost 43 acres of farmland and increasing the local-option meals and hotel taxes, pending legislative approval, will be items considered by voters at annual Town Meeting on Thursday.
With its proposed $22.76 million budget for fiscal year 2026 as part of the 28-article warrant, though, the town will only maintain current services for the first quarter of the new fiscal year — the months of July, August and September — with an anticipation that a Proposition 2½ tax-cap override would need to be passed to avoid cuts in the fall.
“The end result is there are no layoffs anywhere in town, not in the ambulance department, not in any of the departments,” Treasurer Linda Sanderson, who developed the budget with interim Town Administrator Michael Mason, told a joint meeting Wednesday with the Select Board and Finance Committee.
Town Meeting begins at 7 p.m. at Hopkins Academy.
The budget, which includes spending for town and schools, is $791,416, or 3.6%, above the current year’s $21.97 million budget. As structured, the ambulance account is left with $94,750 in receipts to cover employee salaries for three months, well below the $300,000 or more needed to cover the department’s budget.
“Then people will have to decide what they want to do,” Sanderson said. If an override is successful, the money goes to support the ambulance salaries, which are separate from the fee the town pays to the private Action Ambulance service. If an override fails, then all departments will be examined for cuts and efficiencies, in part in preparation for the fiscal year 2027 budget.
For non-budget measures, residents will be asked to amend the senior overlay district, by separating it into the Rural Overlay District, centered on North Maple Street, and the Central Overlay District, mostly along Route 9.
Planning Board Chairman Jim Maksimoski said this renaming will set the stage for allowing different types of 55-and-over projects in the main commercial corridor, following a request from the Parmar family to redevelop the Hadley Village Barn Shops site with an apartment-style building.
“The big changes are to allow a single unit, like an apartment complex, with one and two bedrooms within that complex,” Maksimoski said.
Zoning would also allow up to 10% of all housing units in Hadley to be reserved for 55-and-over. That cap is currently 5%.
Maksimoski said planners support the rezoning because it will have minimal impact, unlike if student housing were built. “They generally don’t use a lot of town services,” Maksimoski said.
With nearly 6,000 acres of permanently protected farmland in town, the state’s Agricultural Preservation Restriction program will be adding almost 43 acres through four projects. These would be supported by $81,855 in town contributions, representing a little over 5% of the full land value, and drawing money evenly from the Community Preservation Act and the Transfer of Development Rights accounts.
The projects include the 11.1-acre Catherine Kelley APR, located between Stockbridge Street and North Hadley Road; the 7.96-acre Margaret Riley APR, off Bay Road; the 8.2-acre Tolper Family Nominee Trust APR, off Middle Street; and the 15.52-acre estate of Joseph Koski APR, between Knightly Road and Stockbridge Street.
There is additional spending recommended from the $2.8 million CPA account, which would be reduced to $1.46 million if all projects are approved. The biggest item is $350,000 to repair the First Congregational Church steeple at 102 Middle St., supplementing $100,000 provided three years ago.
“It’s a big project and it’s certainly an historic building in town,” CPA Committee Chairwoman Mary Thayer said, adding that the building, next to Town Hall, opened in 1808.
Another $150,000 will add to state money and other funding sources to replace all 80 front and rear doors at Golden Court, the Hadley Housing Authority property for seniors and disabled individuals. Many of the doors are original to when the property, located off Middle Street near town center, was built 63 years ago.
Other projects to be supported with CPA money include $72,000 going to the Hadley Cemetery Committee and DPW Cemetery Division to replace the back fence, on the north side, at the Old Hadley Cemetery; $6,500 to build an enclosure to display the historic bell from the North Hadley Village Hall outside the North Hadley fire station at 304 River Drive; and $2,200 to preserve Hadley Historical Society’s 1663 Quanquan Mortgage and the 1676 John Crowe Estate Deed, documents that led to the settlement of Hadley.
Town officials are bringing forward changes to the local options meals tax, a 0.75% increase that would essentially double the tax that could be collected by the town, and the local options rooms tax, a 1% increase that would bring the tax up from the current 6% maximum. Approval would set the stage for the revenue boost to be implemented should related state legislation be approved and signed into law. In January, Gov. Maura Healey refiled the Municipal Empowerment Act that permits increases in the local options meals and rooms taxes, though the Legislature has not yet acted on this.
Other articles on the warrant include amending zoning related to the siting of solar energy systems, to bring the town rules into compliance with advisories from the attorney general; amending the bylaw related to the CPA Committee; and transferring $150,000 from water reserves to the water plant filtration membrane stabilization fund. An article to provide money to build a new DPW headquarters, though, will be passed over.
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.
