SOUTH HADLEY — As residents consider casting their vote for a $9 million or $11 million Proposition 2½ override in two weeks, two camps have formed between those who view the structural budget deficit as disastrous to the town and school services and those concerned about the decimation of their home budgets.
An unanticipated 20% midyear spike in health insurance costs, just weeks into fiscal 2026 last summer, prompted South Hadley leaders to warn of a $3 million deficit projected to worsen in the years ahead. In the wake of that news, the town created a Budget Task Force whose members set out to identify the underlying causes of the budget crisis and to recommend new revenue streams intended to stabilize the budget.
The largest and most immediate of those recommendations involves voters approving Proposition 2½ override.
The Select Board earlier in March voted to send $9 million and $11 million override questions to the taxpayers at an April 14 election. The two-part question gives voters a chance to approve one, both or neither override. If either passes, town leadership plans to incrementally increase taxes over a four- or five-year period before residents see the full permanent rise in taxes go into effect.
Based on a tax override calculator on South Hadley’s town website, the average single-family home valued at $417,000 would pay an additional $1,443 in property taxes with a $9 million override, or $1,764 with an $11 million override by fiscal year 2031. This calculation does not include the annual 2.5% tax increase communities can automatically adopt, nor does it break down the incremental increases seen each year.
South Hadley will see sizable slashes to services and staff on July 1, the start of fiscal 2027, if neither override passes. The budget approved by the Select Board on March 4 included reductions to staff in every town department, reduced hours at Town Hall, closed spray parks and potential desertification of the public library. On the school side, all funding for sports and extracurricular activities would be lost, as well as 15 student-facing positions.
Save South Hadley
Leaders of a group called Save South Hadley are encouraging residents to approve an override when they vote in two weeks, saying that the cuts would be a “sledgehammer” to the community.
“This isn’t a scare tactic,” said Mark Gosselin, who co-chairs the group with Larry Dixon. “These are real cuts that are going to happen.”
When Dixon first heard bits and pieces of the South Hadley’s budget crisis from friends, he was sure it was just gossip until he began listening to municipal meetings in November 2025. Suddenly, the rumors became reality.
In January, Dixon and several other community members realized that most of their neighbors may soon become just as shocked as they were. Their solution was to create Save South Hadley, a ballot question committee dedicated to raising awareness about the purpose of the override.
“That was really sort of the drive behind it, of just realizing that there’s so many people [who] just don’t know about these cuts” Dixon said. “That was even before we knew what the override would be, but we knew something had to happen to get people to wake up to it.”
The organization supports voting yes on both override questions and launched a campaign to encourage residents to do the same. Volunteers table outside of the Senior Center three days a week and canvas neighborhoods every Saturday with informational fliers.
Their website summarizes the last seven months of town budget discussions, walks people through the two-question voting process and includes its own tax override calculator that factors in the annual 2.5% property tax increase.
Gosselin learned about Save South Hadley from parents at his children’s school sports games and drama club events and opted to step up as co-chair. As a father invested in South Hadley’s schools, he is not only concerned about losing opportunities for his children, but the domino effect that cutting extracurricular and academic opportunities would have on school choice.
“The loss of senior center availability, that can’t be understated,” Gosselin said. “This is not just about … younger families, but our older citizens are going to lose that. They’re already losing services, and they are going to lose more.”
Neither Gosselin nor Dixon view the override as a single solution to South Hadley’s budget deficit, but rather a way to prevent depletion of services while the town implements other recommendations of the Budget Task Force. The funds would buy time to stop school choice numbers from increasing when families leave the district for other schools offering rigorous academics and extracurricular programs, Gosselin said.
“We’re at this pivot point where this could be sort of this really great thing for South Hadley,” Dixon said, “Or we vote no and we have all these cuts. And even though we know what the solutions could be and what the concerns are, we don’t have any resources to even try to address them.”
Alliance for Fair Taxes
But members in the “no” override camp say that the town should exhaust the resources it already has to address the budget problems before asking voters to approve an override, said resident Carlene Hamlin.
“Our town deserves better,” she said. “I’m restless and I know many people are restless and I bring that voice forward for them.”
Hamlin, a retired South Hadley town clerk, is part of the Alliance for Fair Taxes, a 12-person group also interested in education around the override. The coalition supports a no vote on both overrides and aims to raise awareness on the missing information around the town’s municipal finance, such as the specific line item budget that the override will cover, a cost-savings analysis of other health insurance plans and the millions of free cash that remain in reserves.
“This is all falling on the backs of our most innocent,” Hamlin said. “Our seniors, our library, our school community, which is frightened. I have neighbors that have looked at me and said please help me solve this problem instead of this continuous conversation for ‘it’s this or nothing.’”
The Alliance of Fair Taxes began as an initial response to resident’s confusion on the two-part ballot question, member Rudy Ternbach said. Since the end of February, the group has written letters to newspapers and made posts on social media. While plans to hand out flyers are in the works, Ternbach said the group is still small and does not have the backing of the Massachusetts Teachers Association like Save South Hadley does.
“We all felt the same about the override being excessive and not being in the best interest of the town,” he said.
Hamlin and Ternbach are frustrated by the communication around the override. Although there is a calculator on the cost of the override, the conversation leaves out potential increases in trash and sewer fees, utility bills and future Proposition 2½ debt exclusion votes. Instead, residents are asked to vote without other fiscal context, Hamlin said.
“There’s a lot of misunderstanding about how those amounts came about, and then there’s a huge misunderstanding of what you are going to be paying these next fiscal years,” Hamlin said.
As a mother with children who went through the South Hadley school system, Hamlin makes it clear that she is not against the schools, and approved many school budget requests as a Town Meeting member.
Ternbach has spoken of a parent who does not want their children to lose access to sports, but cannot support the override. This does not include the seniors on fixed incomes who will not be able to absorb the tax increase.
“This is not the young versus the old, this is a conversation that hasn’t been given factual information and a lot of assumptions are being made,” Hamlin said.
Residents can vote on April 14 at South Hadley High School.
