Tomorrow night, the City Council holds its second and final vote on the city’s $226.4 million budget for Fiscal Year 2027, which begins July 1. Once the Council votes, this budget is the law of the city for the next twelve months. There are no more reads, no more hearings.

On paper, the budget balances. But a close look at the numbers reveals a plan built on very thin margins and a real chance that several assumptions may not hold up once the fiscal year actually begins.

“ Think of it this way: the city is finishing a jigsaw puzzle where every single piece has to fit perfectly. If even one piece is wrong, an unexpected lawsuit, a bad winter, fuel prices spiking… we’re going to free cash again.”

Education Gets The Brunt… Again.

The Methuen Public Schools are receiving $114.28 million in this budget. That sounds like a lot, and it is, but it’s $9.1 million less than what the School Department said it actually needs to operate at the same level which it does currently today. .

“ To put that gap in perspective: $9.1 million is roughly the cost of 90 to 100 teacher salaries. Whether those cuts mean layoffs, program eliminations, or something else, the Council should know the specific answer before voting tonight. ”

They know, or otherwise should as it’s been quite the conversation for the last week. However, they should discuss it openly. My biggest gripe following the first read was that they spent over an hour listening to speakers call attention to the decline in educational value due to class sizes and decreased service, the increased risk to safety due to limited staffing, and when the budget came up… not a peep. Throughout the night, the mayor and the councilors who actually spoke, as some of them sat primarily silent, remarked on concern over continuity of services and focus on safety. Then it came time to discuss the school budget… crickets. Not a single word from anybody.

The Schools did pick up an extra $200k in the first read due to a surprise addition to our tax base. However, we are still gambling on the State bailing us out. It is rumored that the new budget appropriations will have about $4M for our Schools. If the State comes through and bails us out… again… we are looking at 59 positions eliminated with 32 layoffs. If the State doesn’t come and bail us out, we are looking at about 77 layoffs and 119 eliminated positions.

Meanwhile, the Greater Lawrence Technical School assessment also jumped from $5.8M to $6.4M. They’re adding several new teaching positions, continuing to pay their superintendent a disgusting amount of money, and running primarily unchecked.

A Real Focus on Overtime.

The Council cut the Police Department’s general overtime budget from $311,420 to $150,000 during the first read, a reduction of more than 50 percent. Fire overtime was trimmed from $1.8 million to $1.5 million.

“ Here’s why this matters: cutting an overtime budget line doesn’t make overtime go away. Officers still have to show up for court. Firefighters still have to cover shifts when someone calls in sick. The city still holds elections. The overtime will happen the question is just whether there’s money budgeted for it. If not, the city has to scramble to move money around at year’s end. ”

Historical spending records show these lines have run at or over budget consistently going back to at least FY22. Cutting them doesn’t save money. It just moves the problem to the end of the year.

It makes sense why it was done this way and it’s not even the only thing in the budget that we’re going to discuss in this article that’s essentially being kicked down the road for later. There will be a real focus on trying to manage OT. The mayor made that clear with an emphasis on weekly meetings to discuss status and compliance.

It’s worth noting that the challenge here isn’t simply one of poor planning,... overtime culture in municipal government runs deep. For decades, public safety employees have reasonably maximized the overtime available to them under their contracts. That is not a criticism of any individual; it is how the system works. But it is precisely why budgeting overtime at half of recent actual spending is a bet the city is unlikely to win. Mix this with the furloughs and it’s a recipe for disaster and something the city will have a hard time managing.

Utilities…

I had a quick exchange with the Mayor before writing this to confirm my understanding of Utilities and how we pay them. I learned something new and it’s worth explaining clearly because it’s not obvious from reading the budget.

The Fire Department and the Senior Center each have their own utility budget lines. Every other city building, City Hall, the police station, the library administration, all of it, has its utility costs paid from a single line in the DPW budget. That line totals $934,010 in FY27.

“ Imagine one credit card that pays the electricity, heat, water, and fuel for almost every city building except the fire stations and senior center. That’s essentially what the DPW utility block is. ”

The Fire Department's electric and gas line historically has been level-funded at $45,000 a year. To the mayor’s credit, this year it’s gone up to $70, 000. At the same time, the Senior Center has spent the last two fiscal years at $40,000 and this year gets a $5,000 increase. Do either of these accounts adequately cover the actual anticipated expense… I couldn’t tell you but I know from the last two meetings that Councilor Drew has the actuals and this is a question I hope he asks.

The electricity line item in the DPW budget that is designed to cover the rest of the city buildings, excluding the schools, as historically been budgeted around $110,000. The budget document from the first read has the actuals for the current fiscal year at the time of printing of $167,500. The mayor has budgeted $185,000. The water and sewer line has maintained a flat 47,110 over the past couple of fiscal years. There is nothing that I can see on this budget related to natural gas that is used to heat the majority of these buildings.

Winter is Coming

The snow and ice budget for FY27 is $200,000, the same as this year and down from $400,000 in FY25. Massachusetts law actually allows cities to spend more than their snow budget and settle up at the end of the year, which is why this line is routinely underfunded.

“ But here’s the catch: when snow costs run over budget, that overage has to come from somewhere at year’s end. While we hope for a light winter, we protect our free cash account to offset if this winter gets crazy. ”

Trash Costs Keep Climbing

Methuen pays tipping fees, the cost to dispose of the city’s garbage, and those fees are rising. The FY27 budget sets aside $6.02 million for tipping fees, up from $5.5 million in FY25. That’s a $520,000 increase in two years driven almost entirely by contract pricing the city doesn’t control.

The Council cut $200,000 from this line at the first read. Given the upward trend, that cut may need to be revisited before the fiscal year ends.

Councilor Drew and DiZoglio had a disagreement over the management of this line. DiZoglio wants to avoid what happened this year and having to tap into free cash to balance out the account. Drew believes that since we have the new trash czar (as they call it), we are better off using the $200,000 that was cut and, quite possibly a little more, to fund more necessary items. His belief seems to be that because of the efforts of this individual, tipping fees will decrease and it will make more money where we need it. … I don’t disagree.

Twenty Fewer City Employees

The FY27 budget eliminates 20 full-time positions across city government, dropping from 392 to 372 employees. These aren’t all formal layoffs. Some positions are simply zeroed out and left vacant. But the effect is the same: less staff to do the same work.

Notice it says “City Employees.” That is specifically phrased as it doesn’t include layoffs facing our schools.

“ The positions being cut include the Deputy Police Chief, the Assistant Appraiser, the Assistant Treasurer, and multiple DPW laborers and equipment operators. For each one, the Council should know: was this position actually vacant already, or does cutting it mean someone loses their job and their duties just don’t get done? Hopefully someone asks the same question about the schools”

Here are Some Lines that Should be Cut

Here’s a list of things the council should discuss for cuts…

1. Assistant Council Clerk

You may recall that a few weeks ago, the council brought a resolution to increase the salary of the assistant Council clerk. It failed. Reason cited included alignment with the position and a statement was made that we should be paying the position and not the individual. The 2026 budget has the position at 57,882. The 2027 proposed budget after the $2,000 cut plus the furlough amount of $553.81 has it at $66,215. It looks like the council chair, who manages this budget, is getting the raise through regardless. It’s also worth noting that this is exactly what she’s upset about with the mayor… circumventing the process.

2. City Council Office Supplies Budget Line

The Council Chair budgeted $2,500. This line item is routinely at $1,500. It was reduced in the first read by $500. The reason stated at the last meeting was not the increased cost of paper but the fact that she wants a date stamp in the office. The now $2,000 line item, as clarified during the discussion, still allows the Council to buy its own stamp. Currently, the date stamp is in the Solicitor’s office and the Clerk’s Office. This $500 stamp saves a few steps down the hall to the Solicitor’s Office. When we are scraping every dime to fund much more important items, this is something that screams of privilege and ego. Someone should reduce it to it’s original $1,500 budget. If they want to save money by going digital instead of printing their large packets for meetings, they can save up for their stamp.

3. Mayor’s Chief of Staff

Speaking of paying the person and not the role… the mayor’s chief of staff has a great story. If you look at the budget, the previous Chief of Staff spent the bulk of her term under Mayor Perry, making about $105k. Keep in mind, she had 30-plus years of service and an immense amount of knowledge regarding city government and its operation. She did spend 20ish years as the city clerk before being ousted by Mayor Jajagu so he could put his friend Jack Wilson in there. After her departure, the mayor brought in his new CoS, who has next to nothing for work experience and minimal experience in the actual operation of the municipality outside of his 6 years as a city councilor. He started at the same pay that she went out on. Simply, that’s not okay. It does show some favoritism. He should be at step two on that scale

4. Payroll Services

The Council should cut this line by 25% ($12,500) forcing the City to move to a biweekly pay cycle. There is a reason many companies opt for the biweekly (26 pay cycles) or semi-monthly (24 pay cycles) as opposed to the current weekly (52 pay cycles). It’s archaic and costly. The best way to foce the change is to cut the line.

5. Postage (Across the entire budget)

It’s time for the City to explore email as an option. It’s 2026 and we need to embrace savings opportunities.

6. On-Call Overtime in IT

Overtime has been reduced or removed in every department EXCEPT this one. Given the scope of the City and our hours of operations, there shouldn’t be much need for on-call after-hours services.

7. Secretaries at the Police Department

The PD runs a 24/7 operation. So does the FD. The PD runs 2 confidential secretaries and two administrative assistants, while the FD runs with one administrative aide. It’s time to right-size the Police Department.

8. Tuition from Other Expenses in the Police Department

This line was originally funded for $129k and reduced by $42k. This needs some clarification, but since we are in a hiring freeze, there seems to be no reason we need to pay tuition during this time. Zero out the line and free up another $87k.

None of this is going to win political points. Many of these are going to be damning to relectability. However, we need to continue to put pressure on the open wound to stop the bleeding.

Methuen’s finances are in better shape than they were several years ago. The S&P bond rating upgrade is real, and it matters. But a budget that balances only because every variable lands exactly right, no overtime surprises, no hard winter, no litigation, no rate spikes, is a fragile document to govern from.

Second Read is the last chance to ask the hard questions. After the vote, the city lives with the answers.

Full agenda with attachments: Here
Recording of Meeting on Youtube: Here

⭐Councilor MacLaren.

She consistently doesn’t just speak to speak. She speaks to be heard with intention. She says what needs to be said and moves on. She was the gold start of this meeting.

The Council met Monday night for its regular May meeting.

Councilor Pesce was absent and by consensus in the room, she sat out to avoid voting on the health insurance item due to her recent attempt to secure health insurance for herself. Councilor DiZoglio got the call up to the #2 seat to act as vice chair tonight. This is interesting since the last meeting without a vice chair, Councilor Drew was tapped for the substitute opportunity which, for those who know the Councilor, did not sit well with Councilor DiZolgio.

The agenda was updated right out of the gate to remove the presentation and GIC vote due to ongoing negotiations with the unions and the executive session was removed as “the council has already voted on the issues” according to the Solicitor.

A moment of silence was observed for Lieutenant James “Jimmy Mac,” McLachlan, a 29-year member of the Methuen firefighter who recently passed due to occupational cancer.

Councilor Santos offered a religion-free invocation. Minutes from the April 21 Regular Meeting. However, the tone of the invocation was not lost on me and a few others in the room who snickered (you’ll notice a trend throughout the night of this)

They proceeded to accept the minutes from the April 28 Special Meeting and the May 4 Regular Meeting, which were all approved.

Now on to the good part…

Public Participation

Public Participation run by Councilor DiZolgio kicks off…

1. Zackary Spindler, who is a student and resident in town. He spoke in support of the pickleball courts. He thinks the City should keep working to improve this area not just shut it down. As a neighbor to the Rod and Gun club, he knows what the sound is like but the City is appears to be acting in good faith so let’s keep working.

2. Kevin O’Donnell, new union head for ASME 93, spoke about the budget and pending layoffs. He hits on the issue that the people who are impacted had no control over the budget and some of them don’t make very much at all. He advocated for his union members and the community to avoid layoffs and reduced services.

3. Diane Moore, chair of the historic district commission, member of the historic commission, and the preservation commission, spoke about Searless and the ability to continue offering lectures at the Estate. She brings attention to the growing interest in the Estate.

4. Ann DiBeneditto, retired teacher in Methuen after 35 years. She was here when the PEC was formed. She appreciates the work being done by the Mayor and the PEC but is upset about the surprise split increase retirees saw in January. She wants to see the work continue to get the best outcome for everyone.

5. Linday Soucy thanked the Council and everyone for the support at the Mann Inc charity gold tournament. She thanks the Kattar’s specifically (which becomes even more relevant in the appointments section). Then she transitions to the dirt bikes and thanks DiZolgio for his efforts. She supports the gas station solution but realizes its going to take more than just this to find a solution. She also congratulated Zack for speaking earlier, acknowledging how hard is to come up and speak at the podium and congratulated the appointments coming up on the agenda.

6. Kristen Maxwell, a former school committee member, accurately hits on the sad state of the political scene in Methuen. Then recounts her resignation before heading into the “…letters, and coordinated attacks against us for differences of opinions” statement, which is loaded with irony. She also hits on the importance of holding individuals accountable for their own actions and those of others. (This deserves its own article in the future.)

7. Eric Moreau, president of the firefighters’ union, came to thank the city and its residents for the support received during the services for Jimmy Mac.

8. Kara Blatt, co-president of the Teachers Union and member of PEC, thanks the body for their countless hours to work on this and for tabling tonight’s PEC issues for the body to negotiate. She raises one thing that is very new in this City… for the first time ever, every union is united. That has never happened in Methuen before. She accurately hits on how every union relys on the rest.

9. Lois Jacobs, retired Methuen teacher, thanks the Mayor for pulling the PEC vote and wants to keep working on making this better for everyone. She just wants a fair solution.

10. Steven Sarconie, the resident representing the neighbors at the center of the pickleball court. He presented the history to remind people that this isn’t about the sport, it’s about the noise and proximity to the homes. He came with facts about how, despite the issues raised even before these were built, citing stories from other communities, and the City spending 300k on beautification instead of issue mitigation. He just wants this fixed.

11. Heather Plunkett spoke about the item on the agenda by Valley on the liability concern for the Searles Estate. She is concerned that this is an attempt to stop events at the Estate and hopes this isn’t the case.

12. Ace Hayden piggybacks on the support for the Searless. She just doesn’t want to lose it and shared how the Massachusetts Film Commission came out to tour it.

Appointments

The respective chiefs read each candidate’s backup into the record before each vote. It’s also worth noting that the hall was full of Firefighters, pouring over in the hallways. All of whom came out for their brothers to show support.

Firefighter Jesse Kattar — Lieutenant

The name Kattar is a well-known one in town, which made Soto’s mispronunciation of it land with a chuckle from the firefighters in the hallway. Councilor Drew asked why the position is necessary, pointing to CBA staffing requirements. Simard called out the civil service framework. Soto requested a roll call. Passed 8-0-1.

Firefighter Sean Wholley — Lieutenant

Moved by DiZoglio, seconded by Santos. Passed 8-0-1.

Acting Police Lieutenant Matthew Mueskes — Permanent Police Lieutenant

Moved by Simard, seconded by Santos. Drew asked the same position-necessity question. Simard spoke highly of Mueskes. Passed 8-0-1.

Acting Police Sergeant Matthew St. Jean — Permanent Police Sergeant

Moved by Simard, seconded by Santos. Passed 8-0-1.

The Council recessed briefly for photos.

Mayor’s Report

Bond Rating

S&P affirmed the city’s AA bond rating with a stable outlook. The Mayor noted this allows the city to borrow at better interest rates.

Clean Energy Grant

Methuen won a clean energy grant to update the Timony, selected from 61 applicants. The Mayor said the administration will keep aggressively pursuing outside funds.

FY27 Budget

The Mayor acknowledged his budget, released Friday, would have been easier to produce by maintaining the status quo. He said that’s not why he was elected.

Major Projects

Highlighted projects include Apex for the Milk Street traffic calming project, the Oakland Avenue Bridge repair, and engineering and design work for streetscape improvements in the Arlington neighborhood. A working group is ongoing for rezoning planning.

Bond Refinancing

Councilor Drew asked about the opportunity to refinance existing bonds. CAFO said they look at it regularly but it hasn’t been worth it.

June 5 at 6pm: MHS Graduation.

CAFO Report

Searles Estate Expenses & Revenues (Req. of Clr. Soto)

The CAFO distributed handouts: the 2026 CIP, a revised bonding approach for better rates and management, a utilities update, a snow and ice summary, and notice of a $2.5 million shortfall she’ll be formally requesting. Santos noted she had reached out about the Oakland Avenue School and is waiting on additional information.

DiZoglio raised something about a camera that wasn’t initially clear, eventually landing on a discussion about body cameras — the grant for which has expired.

Drew asked how the administration plans to address the snow and ice shortfall. CAFO said they’re looking at options in other lines to minimize the free cash impact.

Valley asked about the Echo Lane bond. CAFO explained the authorization rolls over and the city won’t take the loan until it’s ready to begin in FY27.

Soto asked the CAFO to include totals on categories and to send reports in advance of meetings.

Requests of Councilors

Paving List on the City Website (Req. of Chair Soto)

DPW has a draft. It will be posted once complete.

Assessor Appointment — Legal Opinion (Req. of Chair Soto)

Soto brought forward a discussion and request for a legal opinion regarding the appointment authority for the Acting Assessor, City Assessor, or Chief Assessor positions. The Mayor directed her to the City Solicitor but laid out his legal logic, rooted in Massachusetts General Law, explaining why the process was valid. Soto argued the charter should control and noted this is how appointments have worked going back decades. She also disclosed she served as an assessor from 2020 to 2023 and said she was actually looking forward to using this temporary appointment as a test run before committing to a permanent hire.

What followed was a stretch of Soto asking the Mayor questions without letting him answer. The Mayor acknowledged that posting the job as a department head position was a mistake… his mistake. Soto then went after the City Solicitor, accusing him of writing an opinion for the Mayor without her permission as the Chair and his boss and characterizing the Mayor’s approach as sneaky.

Temp Vice Chair DiZoglio gave the Mayor the floor. The Mayor said he respects the checks and balances and pushed back on the idea that doing things the same way they’ve always been done is the same as doing them right.

Simard called it out plainly: this is budget season, this looks personal, and the Council received a 10-page document from Soto at the meeting tonight with no advance notice about why the Mayor is wrong. Soto countered that the Council received a 50-page packet from the Solicitor at the start of the meeting, so don’t complain about hers. The entire exchange lacked maturity and continued to throughout the rest of the item.

Soto made clear she wants the appointment voided, a new process run, and a new candidate. She also made a fairly direct threat to cut the new Assessor’s position in the budget. The Mayor noted he didn’t write the charter, state statute, or municipal code, reminding Soto she is a legislator, so “if you don’t like the rules, change them”.

MacLaren called out the grandstanding and said the focus should be on fixing the disconnect, not relitigating it.

The City Solicitor then spoke. He said he understood why people feel as they do, confirmed he was asked by the Mayor to review the matter, and agreed there is a disconnect between the code and the charter that should be fixed through the proper process. He was direct: he works for the city, not for Soto or the Mayor alone. MacLaren added that if something needs to be done, put forth a resolution otherwise, move on.

Other Requests — Status Updates

• Echo Lane Sewer Connection RFP (Req. of Clr. Valley): Pending.

• Rail Trail Depot Overhangs (Req. of Clr. Valley): Pending.

• Route 110 Sidewalk/Bike Lane Project (Req. of Clr. Valley): At the state level. Waiting on the state to respond.

• Searles Estate Liability (Req. of Clr. Valley): Pending.

• Oakland Avenue Bridge State Report (Req. of Clr. Santos): Provided in the Mayor’s report and on the agenda.

• Public Safety Buildings / DPW Feasibility Study (Req. of Clr. Santos): Provided in the Mayor’s report and on the agenda.

• Parks Audit RFP (Req. of Clr. Drew): With the Council for review.

• Buildings Audit RFP (Req. of Clr. Drew): Same as parks.

• Pickleball Court / Public Petition (Req. of Clr. MacLaren): Pending.

• Forest Street Paving (Req. of Clr. MacLaren): It is on the paving list.

Contracts

C-26-87: Apex Companies, LLC — $48,600

Engineering services for the Milk Street Traffic Calming Project through DPW. Moved by Simard, seconded by Santos. No discussion. Passed 8-0-1.

C-26-88: Weston & Sampson CMR, Inc. — $75,750

Engineering services for expanded feasibility studies of the Public Works, Police, and Fire facilities. Moved by Santos, seconded by Drew. DiZoglio asked what the contract covers; the Mayor described it as a tangible next step. Santos asked about a prior feasibility study she’d requested but says she never received. The Mayor said he was on the email chain confirming it was sent. For context: the last study was done during the Jajuga administration (2017-2019). This contract expands the scope and builds on that earlier work. Passed 8-0-1.

C-26-89: NEL Corporation — $57,503.34

Emergency repair to the Oakland Avenue Bridge under DCAMM Waiver No. 5291. Moved by Marsan, seconded by Valley. Santos wanted a timeline, noting it’s been months. The Mayor walked through the sequence: state negotiations, DCAMM waiver obtained, funding identified… this vote is what lets the work start. CAFO jumped in to restate and noted the contract expressly states an anticipated completion date of July 31st. Passed 8-0-1.

C-26-90: Woodard & Curran — $235,500

Engineering services for Phase I-A of the Arlington Neighborhood Streetscape Improvement through DPW. Moved by Marsan, seconded by Santos. DiZoglio’s question: concrete or hot top for the sidewalks? The Mayor made a joke about how he knows this is a very important issue for DiZoglio. The Mayor called up Director Bower who said concrete is the preference but it’s cost-prohibitive as salt kills it. DiZoglio said other cities do it. Bower said they can get quotes but right now this is design work. Passed 8-0-1.

C-26-91: Hilltown Demolition, LLC — $34,900

Installation of a concrete slab at Veterans Memorial Park for the base of an outdoor Fitness Court through DPW Recreation. Moved by Drew, seconded by Valley. DiZoglio said this is the best thing the city can bring to residents. Drew noted he visited the site with Director Angelo and that the layout is planned with future expansion in mind. Passed 8-0-1.

C-26-92: E.J. Paving Company, Inc. — $1,197,448

Chapter 90-funded paving contract for FY2026 through DPW. Moved by Drew, seconded by Valley. Valley called up Deputy Director Felix: approximately 3.5 miles of road at 4 inches thick. She asked for the list of roads and it will be provided. She also asked for the bid on reclamation work, which is still pending signatures. Drew confirmed the contract covers roads and asphalt curbs, not sidewalks. Marsan asked process questions; Felix explained. Passed 8-0-1.

C-26-93: DCAMM Waiver No. 5289 — $897,677

Emergency purchase and replacement of seven bulk chemical tanks, plus pipes, valves, fittings, and transfer pumps at the Water Treatment Plant. Moved by Drew, seconded by Santos. DiZoglio asked why the city keeps repairing the plant and whether grants are an option. The Mayor acknowledged deferred maintenance has piled up and confirmed the city is always looking for outside funding. Drew noted these valves require routine attention. Marsan acknowledged the equipment is old and neglected, worth noting as it wasn’t discussed or mentioned that he served six years on the Council during which this work was deferred. The Mayor flagged that water and sewer rates are long overdue for an increase to keep up with the actual demands and costs. Passed 8-0-1.

Other Officers and Committee Reports

DiZoglio on Public Safety: he went with Soto and Bower to the conservative club to clear the bird sanctuary and were approved, with the PD getting access from their side. He mentioned a potential resolution on road restoration after utility excavations, something on handicap parking (details were not entirely clear), outreach to the Salem lighting vendor who did the lanterns there, and a reference to the dirt bike ordinance on tonight’s agenda.

Old Business

TR-25-75: Cooper Lane as a Public Way

Removed from the table by Drew, seconded by DiZoglio. The Solicitor updated the Council and deferred to conservation and DPW: the waterway needs to be cleaned out before the street can be accepted. Once the conservation agent confirms completion and bond requirements are met, including a contribution to the sidewalk fund which is required when only putting a sidewalk on one side of the street, it can move forward. Simard knows the builder and is confident they’ll comply but moved to table in the meantime. Valley seconded. Marsan opposed. Soto called for a roll call. Passed 6-2-1, with Marsan and Santos voting no.

TR-26-32: Health Insurance Options (MGL Ch. 32B, Sections 21-23)

Removed from the agenda.

TR-26-49: PACE Massachusetts

A Resolution authorizing the City of Methuen to participate in the Massachusetts Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy Program. Moved by Drew, seconded by DiZoglio. Passed 8-0-1.

New Business

TR-26-50: Home Rule Petition: Reinstatement of Positions by Seniority

Sponsored by Soto, DiZoglio, and Valley. Moved by Valley, seconded by Santos. This addresses the scenario where superior officers could be demoted as civil service counts time on the job, not time in a specific rank. The Fire Chief acknowledged emotions are running high with the budget and said this resolution will help. Worth noting: the Mayor was listed as a co-sponsor but asked to be removed before the vote. The reason wasn’t stated. Passed 8-0-1.

TR-26-51: $15,200 SAFE / Senior SAFE Grant

Requested by the Mayor and Chief. Moved by Drew, seconded by Santos. An EPA was requested to access the funds quickly. Passed 8-0-1. EPA also passed.

TO-26-11: Pest Control Ordinance for Demolition, Site Clearing, and Commercial Waste

Sponsored by Councilor DiZoglio. Moved by Santos, seconded by DiZoglio. Passed 8-0-1.

TO-26-13: Nepotism Ordinance Amendment

Removed from the table. As amended.

TO-26-14: Self-Service Gas Stations Ordinance (EPA Requested)

Sponsored by DiZoglio and Chief McNamara. Moved by Drew, seconded by Valley. DiZoglio said the ordinance came out of an ask from Linda Soucy following a motorcycle crash on Merrimack Street. This one was painful to watch. DiZoglio asked Chief McNamara to come forward. He was clearly trying to distance himself from this resolution. He noted Lawrence recently passed a similar ordinance and said it’s not a unique problem,the issue is off-road vehicles being ridden on public roads, which has been in the news. The PD’s restrictive pursuit policy limits what officers can do in real time; he said he’d rather have a drone to track these riders than put officers and the public in dangerous chases. He wants to bring it back to the drawing board.

Santos said the focus should be on public safety without burdening gas stations. Simard said it’s a nice try but the mechanism isn’t right, and pointed to the courts as the real problem, citing the individual on Merrimack Street with a gun doing wheelies who was let go with a warning after facing gun charges. MacLaren agreed the public needs protection but this ordinance isn’t the way. Simard suggested tabling. DiZoglio made a case for legislative action that wandered into a broader commentary on gun laws.

After far to much back and forth, Drew moved to table. Seconded by Marsan. Passed 8-0-1.

And that was all she wrote….

Until next time!

Check out the fiscal breakdown here: https: FY27 Budget

The transmittal letter, the budget document, and the articles shared to the Council can be see here: Here

Mayor Beauregard submitted the city’s FY27 budget to the City Council early yesterday evening. His cover letter did not sugarcoat it. “The FY27 budget before you is balanced. It is also painful. I do not like it. Nobody should” he writes to the Council as he opens on a bleek but honest disclaimer for what was to come in the budget.

That framing is accurate. The total General Fund budget proposed is $225.8 million, up from $220.8 million approved in FY26. That top-line increase is real but misleading. The growth is almost entirely driven by costs the city cannot control: health insurance up nearly $2 million, pension contributions up $829,171, charter school tuition, solid waste disposal. Inside that total are cuts, eliminations, and deferrals that will be felt by residents in ways that a single summary number does not capture.

The Salary Reductions Are Furloughs

Throughout this budget, salary lines across nearly every department are reduced in the range of 4 to 5 percent. These are not pay cuts and they are not reclassifications. They are furloughs: mandatory unpaid days off that reduce what employees take home without eliminating their jobs.

A city employee earning $80,000 does not see their salary renegotiated. They are required to take a number of unpaid days across FY27. The budget reflects what the city will actually pay out. The employee keeps their position, their benefits, and their contractual standing.

Furloughs cannot be imposed unilaterally. City employees are represented by unions, and under Massachusetts labor law, the city is required to engage in impact bargaining before furloughs can take effect. That means formally notifying each union, sitting down to negotiate over how the furloughs are structured and what effects they have on wages and working conditions, and reaching an agreement. This is not a formality. The unions have real leverage, be assured… they will use it.

What the city brings to that bargaining table is a fiscal argument that is hard to dispute. The alternative to furloughs is layoffs. Furloughs spread the pain across the workforce and everyone keeps their job. Layoffs concentrate the pain and some people lose their jobs entirely. For a city facing a structural fiscal crisis that the Massachusetts Municipal Association has documented is affecting every gateway community in the state, that argument carries genuine weight. The unions know the numbers. Their members live in Methuen. The conversation in bargaining is not about whether there is a problem. It is about how the sacrifice gets distributed and whether the city’s proposed distribution is fair.

What the Council needs to watch closely is whether the furlough savings materialize as budgeted. If bargaining with any of the unions results in furlough terms that differ from the administration’s projection, the numbers in this budget change. The Mayor’s proposed budget assumes a certain level of savings from furloughs across the workforce. If those savings come in lower, something else has to give. The Council should ask the administration directly: what is the contingency plan if the furlough math does not land as projected?

One more thing worth calling out. Furloughs ask real people to earn less so that the city can stay solvent. City employees in Methuen are not abstractions in a budget document. They are neighbors, parents, and residents who are being asked to absorb sacrifice to keep services running. That deserves to be said out loud, not buried in percentage reductions. I don’t think is lost on the Mayor and his team at all.

With that context, here is what the Mayor proposed department by department.

The Schools

This is the central issue in the budget.

The School Committee requested $129.9 million. The Mayor proposed $113.98 million. The gap is $9.2 million. Chapter 70 school aid from the state is increasing 2.3 percent. The actual cost of maintaining current school services is rising roughly 11 percent. The city cannot close that gap on its own.

The problem is not just the number. It is what does not exist yet. The school department has not produced an accounting of what the Mayor’s figure actually means for the district. What positions go. What programs end. What class sizes become. The Council will be asked to vote on a budget with a $9.2 million school funding gap and no line-by-line picture of the impact. That accounting needs to exist before the vote happens as the budget that was approved is a few million over what the Mayor authorized and presented.

There is also a meaningful distinction between what furloughs do for city employees and what this budget likely means for school staff. A furloughed DPW worker keeps their job and takes a temporary pay reduction. School cuts of this magnitude almost certainly mean layoffs, not furloughs. Those are permanent losses, not temporary ones. The Council and the public deserve to know exactly which is which before this budget is adopted.

This plan of waiting for the State to save us is hopeful but dangerous.

Health Insurance and Pension

Two costs in this budget are mandatory, actuarially driven, and not negotiable in any meaningful short-term sense.

Employee health insurance rises to $19.45 million, up nearly $2 million from last year. The Mayor is actively exploring whether Methuen can join the Group Insurance Commission, the state’s employee health insurance program, which could produce significant long-term savings. That process requires union bargaining and takes time. It is the right conversation to be having. It does not help FY27. It’s also worth noting that this line has routinely been overrun and is likely to happen again. It’s uncapped and uncontrolled.

The pension contribution rises to $17.26 million, up $829,171. This is set by an independent actuary based on the city’s pension liability. It is legally mandated. It cannot be reduced.

Together those two lines account for over $38 million in the budget and grew by nearly $2.9 million from last year alone. That growth happens regardless of anything else the city does.

Public Safety

Frontline patrol staffing is preserved. All 77 patrolmen, 15 sergeants, 6 lieutenants, 2 captains, and the Chief remain in place. The same is true for fire: 81 firefighters, 21 lieutenants, 4 deputies, 3 captains, assistant chief, and chief, all intact.

What changes is the operational structure around them. Police overtime is cut from $311,420 to $150,000, a 51 percent reduction. The cadet program is eliminated entirely. On the fire side, overtime drops $300,000 (about 50%) from what the department requested. Both departments lose positions at the administrative level.

The overtime cuts are the numbers to watch. If either department exceeds its budget mid-year, and it has happened before, the city is back before the Council with a supplemental appropriation request. The Council should pressure-test both figures with the department heads before voting.

Public Works

The Department of Public Works goes from 76.5 to 64 employees, an 18 percent reduction in headcount. Overtime is cut in half. Road repair materials are cut. Building maintenance is cut. This department runs the roads, the parks, the buildings, and the infrastructure that residents interact with every day. A reduction of this scale will be visible. I understand why the mayor did this but the Council should be honest with residents about that rather than absorbing it quietly into a budget document.

Elder Services and Veterans

Both departments are already at the bare bones. Elder Services takes a $6,111 reduction. Veterans takes $16,882. Veterans benefits payments of $275,000 are preserved. There is nothing left to cut in either department without directly harming the people they exist to serve.

Library

Level-funded at $1,929,340, the same as last year. The department requested $67,000 more and was denied. The Library runs heavily on its own Trust. The city’s contribution is a baseline, not a full operating budget.

Economic and Community Development

Worth flagging separately from the administrative cuts. The Assistant Director of ECD takes a 52 percent reduction, from $73,036 to $46,444. The Economic Development Coordinator drops similarly. These are not furloughs. Furloughs do not produce 52 percent reductions. Overtime is eliminated. Professional services cut in half. The Mayor’s own transmittal letter identifies growing Methuen’s commercial tax base as a central long-term strategy. Cutting the people responsible for that work by half is a tension the Council should name directly.

Legal

Retains full staff with furlough reductions across salary lines. One line warrants a question: the general Expenses line doubles from $8,000 to $16,000 with no explanation. That running rate has been consistent for years. The Council should ask what changed before accepting it.

Human Resources

Five FTE retained. The line that needs attention is the HR Administrator, Diversity, and ADA position, which goes from $96,804 to $15,000 while remaining listed as 1 FTE. That is not a furlough. Upon investigation, those duties are being divided and compenstated by stipend. Methuen has not historically been strong on ADA compliance. Gutting the role responsible for it would create legal exposure. The Council should ask what the plan is to verify.

Health, Human Services and Inspections

One of the few departments that actually grows, adding a second Community Outreach Coordinator. Grants cover $368,829 in salary costs in this department. One line needs an explanation before the vote: Professional Services jumps from $2,500 to $26,500. That is a tenfold increase that demands explanation.

City Clerk

Staffing unchanged with furlough reductions. The budget increases overall because Election Services doubles from $60,000 to $120,000. I am sure the City Clerk will make her case but it’s worth noting that this is to cover a primary and a general election this year. In addition, we need to cover printing costs for state ballots… another lovely unfunded mandate gifted down from the State.

What the Council Needs Before It Votes

A few things are missing that should exist before this budget is adopted.

A school impact statement. The school administration should be required to present a specific accounting of what the $9.2 million gap means in practice before the Council votes.

A furlough contingency. If union bargaining on any of the furlough agreements produces different terms than projected, the budget math changes. The Council should ask the administration what the plan is if the furlough savings do not land as written.

A debt schedule. The debt service line carries $2.15 million in general interest. The Council should have a full accounting of what bonds remain outstanding, at what rates, and when they mature. This is standard practice and should be presented as a matter of course.

This budget was not written to make anyone happy. It was written to keep the city functional in circumstances that would break a less careful approach. The Mayor chose not to ask residents for a tax override. He chose not to drain free cash reserves. He chose to absorb the pain inside city government first. Despite my disagreement and belief that an override should have been at least presented to the residents for a vote, his instincts are right even when the results are hard to look at.

The Council’s job now is to fill in the gaps, ask the questions that are not yet answered, and make sure that when it votes, it knows what it is voting for.

Sources: FY27 Budget, Expenses General Fund Proposed (City of Methuen); FY27 City Council Transmittal Letter, Mayor David P. Beauregard Jr., May 15, 2026; “A Perfect Storm: Cities and Towns Face Historic Fiscal Pressures,” Massachusetts Municipal Association, October 2025.

Methuen is in the middle of one of the most painful budget seasons this city has seen in a long time. Word is already circulating that we are staring down furloughs and layoffs across nearly every department. Services that residents count on are being restructured or stopped outright. Some of this is squarely on the city itself, the result of decades of weak economic development and a government structure that was never truly built to balance efficiency with effectiveness. That is an honest conversation we need to have as a community, and it is long overdue.

But that is not what this is about today.

Today I want to talk about one question…

First, What Is Proposition 2 and 1/2? People talk about it but not many truly understand it.

Let me explain it simply, because it matters.

Proposition 2 and 1/2 is a Massachusetts law passed by voters in 1980 that limits how much a city or town can raise in property taxes each year.[1] The name comes from the two core rules it sets: the total property tax a city collects cannot exceed 2.5 percent of the full value of all taxable property in the city, and the tax levy cannot grow by more than 2.5 percent from one year to the next.[2]

That’s great but what does that mean in numbers? Here is a real-world example to which we can all relate.

Imagine your household budget is $50,000 a year. Every year, you are allowed to spend up to 2.5 percent more, so next year you can spend $51,250. That's it. You cannot spend $55,000 even if your rent went up, your groceries got more expensive, and your kids need new school supplies, unless the people living under your roof vote to allow it.

That is exactly the situation Methuen is in.

Since 1980, municipal costs have exploded with new state and federal mandates, rising health care expenses, and a technology footprint that bears no resemblance to local government in 1995. The 2.5 percent cap, however, has remained unchanged, and municipalities have become increasingly unable to meet their obligations under it.[3]

But here is the part that matters most for this conversation: the law already has a built-in safety valve. An override provision allows voters to raise additional revenues by a specific amount. This is done by placing an override question on the ballot in a general or special election and approving it by a simple majority of voters.[2]

The people get to decide. That is the whole point.

The Budget That Cannot Add Up

Methuen is trying to close a nearly $10 million school budget gap just to maintain existing programs at current levels, with no additions or increases.[4]

Rising costs in health insurance and special education have contributed to a $4 million deficit, and the potential elimination of reading specialists could result in long-term educational setbacks, with struggling students requiring even more resources down the road. Cut now, pay more later. That is the cycle.[6]

And it is not just schools. Fire, police, public health, and basic city services are all on the table. Mayor Beauregard is entering his first full budget cycle as a fully elected mayor, and the hand he has been dealt is genuinely bad. State funding for local schools increased only about 2.3 percent, which does not come close to covering an 11 percent increase in costs.

The math does not work. But there is a reason the math does not work, and it is bigger than this budget cycle.

Since 1980, without overrides, the maximum value of taxpayer contributions to communities has declined nearly 50 percent in real terms, as inflation has consistently outpaced the 2.5 percent cap year after year. Methuen has been drawing down that well for decades, and now the well is showing its bottom.[7]

Why the Override Question Should Go to a Vote

I am not here to tell you the override should pass. That is not my call. I’m just one vote and I’m not even sure, as I sit here writing this, how I would vote come the opportunity.

What I am saying is this:

Proposition 2 and 1/2 was designed from the start as both a constraint and an opportunity. It constrains automatic tax growth, protecting homeowners from runaway increases. But it also creates a formal, democratic pathway for cities and towns to invest in schools, public safety, and infrastructure when voters judge it necessary. That pathway exists. Methuen should use it.[7]

Statewide, 254 of 305 Massachusetts cities and towns, fully 83 percent, have placed and passed override questions at some point, making ballot-driven revenue a mainstream municipal tool rather than a rare emergency measure. This is not radical. Communities across the Commonwealth use this process routinely.[7]

Passed overrides now provide roughly $1.3 billion per year in inflation-adjusted revenue statewide, funding recurring services and debt that communities chose to prioritize.[7] Communities like Wakefield, Winchester, Reading, Medford, and North Reading have relied on overrides to sustain services over time.[7] These are not wealthy communities doing something unusual. They are communities that chose to ask their residents a direct question and let the answer guide the budget.

If I were mayor, that is exactly what I would do. I would put the question on the ballot, give the unions, the teachers, the firefighters, the police, the parents, and the community a few weeks to make their case, and then let Methuen vote.

The Political Reality Nobody Is Saying Out Loud

There is another dimension here that deserves to be said plainly.

The budget the mayor must produce this year will have serious, painful consequences for the fire and police departments. Those two unions have historically been among the most important political forces in this city. No candidate wins a serious race in Methuen without their support. The budget cuts required by the current fiscal reality put that support at serious risk, not because the mayor wants to cut those departments, but because there is no other math.[5]

Here is what makes this moment genuinely urgent: there are no signs that next year will be better. Every indication points toward a second consecutive brutal budget cycle. That creates a window of real political vulnerability, and there are people in this city who have been positioning themselves for a long time, whether for mayor or for something else.

If the mayor navigates this crisis by making the hard cuts alone, absorbing all the political pain, and the budget is just as bad or worse twelve months from now, he will have spent enormous political capital with nothing to show for it and a fresh round of the same fights ahead.

But if an override goes to the ballot, the pain shifts. The unions get a chance to rally their members and their communities around a concrete question. The parents, teachers, firefighters, and police officers get to stand in front of their neighbors and make a direct case. And the mayor, whatever the outcome, can say truthfully that he trusted the people of Methuen with the decision, which I think he does. Although I think he feels he needs to protect the City from itself.

If it passes, the city has real revenue and the mayor has a mandate.

If it fails, the cuts that follow are no longer the mayor's cuts alone. They are the community's answer to its own question.

Where local officials genuinely believe there is a strong case to be made for generating additional revenue, they should make that case directly to voters, rather than making unilateral decisions that voters were never given the chance to weigh in on. That is sound democratic logic. It applies directly to Methuen right now.[8]

It is true that Methuen tends to move on quickly. Local politics here can have a short shelf life. A crisis today becomes background noise tomorrow.

But back-to-back years of devastating budgets are a different animal entirely. Back to back years of layoffs, service cuts, and fights over who gets hurt most create a story that is harder to shake. Two years of that narrative is what a challenger campaign is built on, and there are people watching this moment closely.

The mayor has a narrow window to change the shape of this story. The override vote is that window. It says: I believe in this community enough to ask the question directly. You decide.

Let the People Decide

Methuen does not need a mayor who stands in front of the bullet himself making all the hard calls quietly behind closed doors. It needs a mayor who respects the democratic tool that Massachusetts law has already put in place for moments exactly like this one. Oddly enough, that is exactly who I know the Mayor to be…

The override process is not a gimmick. It is not an escape hatch. It is the system working as designed: a formal, legal, democratic mechanism for a community to look itself in the mirror and answer an honest question.

How much do we value our schools, our fire department, our police, our public health infrastructure, and the basic services that make this city function?

Put it on the ballot. Let Methuen answer.

Sources

1. Wikipedia — 1980 Massachusetts Proposition 2½https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Massachusetts_Proposition_2%C2%BD

2. Town of Rehoboth — Proposition 2 and 1/2 Questions and Answershttps://www.rehobothma.gov/assessors/pages/proposition-2-12-questions-and-answers

3. Dinsmore and Shohl LLP — Strict Property Tax Caps: A Case Study of Massachusettshttps://www.dinsmore.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Article-Strict-Property-Tax-Caps..-1.pdf

4. CBS Boston — Methuen, Massachusetts Struggling to Close $9.6M School Budget Gaphttps://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/methuen-school-budget-gap-cuts/

5. The Boston Globe — Methuen Mayor, School Committee Divided Over District Budget (June 13, 2025)https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/06/13/metro/methuen-budget-cuts-and-teacher-layoffs/

6. LocalLens — Methuen School Committee Grapples with Budget Cuts Amid IT Consolidation Dispute (June 2025)https://thelocallens.org/methuen-school-committee-grapples-with-budget-cuts-amid-it-consolidation-dispute/

7. Stoneham Civic Ledger — A History of Proposition 2 and 1/2 Across Massachusetts and in Our Neighborhoods (October 2025)https://stonehamcivicledger.substack.com/p/a-history-of-proposition-2-across

8. Tax Foundation — MA Proposition 2 and 1/2 Is Working (November 2025)https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/state/massachusetts-property-tax-proposition-2-12/

For years, the Methuen School Committee members, myself included, have voted to opt out of the inter-district school choice program before June 1 each year, as required by Massachusetts General Law. Year after year, the resolution was filed and the vote to opt out was cast. The reasons offered varied from community identity, uncertainty about incoming students, to concern about costs, but they shared one common thread: they were not grounded in the facts of how the program actually works.

It wasn’t until recently (the last few days, actually), when the fiscal realities of Methuen’s declining enrollment began to hit hard, that a more complete picture emerged because we went looking for it. Unfortunately, what that picture shows is troubling: the School Committee has been voting to opt out of a program it clearly did not fully understand, based on arguments that do not hold up to legal or financial scrutiny.

The information was always publicly available. It simply was never adequately presented to the committee and they never bothered to investigate what the real fiscal impact, both of opting out and opting in, actually looks like.

Some members of the committee have employed a tactic that, whatever its intent, has had the effect of misleading the public: painting school choice as a mechanism that would flood Methuen’s schools with troubled kids, expensive special-needs students, and unpredictable costs.

It is a compelling fear. It is also not how the law works. With a little effort, some digging in, it is time to say so clearly.

What Is School Choice?

Massachusetts law allows families to enroll their children in schools outside of the city or town where they reside. This is known as inter-district school choice and is defined in G.L. c. 76, §12B. This law states, in summary, that by default, every school district in the state is a school choice district. However, a district may elect not to enroll school-choice students if no space is available. The opt-out mechanism is defined in section (d) of the law and states: “however, that this obligation to enroll non-resident students shall not apply to a district for a school year in which its school committee, prior to June first, after a public hearing, adopts a resolution withdrawing from said obligation, for the school year beginning the following September.”

The law does not allow cities to opt out of permitting students to attend schools in other communities that accept school-choice students. The only thing a city can opt out of is accepting students. Additionally, it requires each sending district to pay a tuition to the district that accepts its students. Currently, that fee is set at $5,000 per student, plus a $75 administration fee. However, the accepting district adds the cost of special education to that fee.

According to the state, Methuen’s preliminary amount to be paid for the 55 Methuen students who are choosing to attend another public school in Massachusetts through inter-district school choice in FY26, based on the October 1, 2025, enrollment data, is $749,933. You read that correctly: Methuen is paying three-quarters of a million dollars for 55 students to choose to be educated in a different public school, with no say in where they go or what services they receive.

We simply have to pay the bill.

If you are thinking the numbers are not adding up, 55 students times $5,075 is $279,125, not $749,933… You would be correct.

So why are we paying so much?

The answer is: we are paying the receiving district’s special education costs for our students. Let that sink in...

We have no say in what services a student receives; we simply pay the bill. This quite literally means that a student can school-choice to another city, the other city can provide the child every service under the sun, up to and including an out-of-district placement, and Methuen, with no programmatic input, must pay the bill that is sent to the state.

This is not a quirk or a loophole. It is the explicit design of the law.

As the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) explains in its advisory memorandum on financial administration of the school choice program, for students with an individualized education plan (IEP), a special education increment is added to the regular education tuition rate, determined by applying annual cost rates to the specific services cited in the student’s IEP and it is the sending district’s responsibility to pay it. ^[1]

The “Troubled Kids” and “Expensive Special Needs” Argument and Why It Falls Apart

So, when city councilor (Ryan) DiZoglio recently stated during a meeting that he did not support school choice because we didn’t know what kind of students we would be receiving, and we would have to foot the bill for the special education services for the students that come into the district via school choice, he clearly didn’t do any research or even ask anyone what Methuen would be on the hook to pay. Meanwhile, the state explains it very clearly.

Having misinformation spread by elected officials is not only irresponsible but also dangerous. But let’s address this argument on its merits, because it deserves a direct rebuttal.

First: the concern about special education costs applies to students Methuen sends out, NOT students we accept.

Under the law, when Methuen accepts school choice students, the sending district, not Methuen, pays the special education costs. The DESE advisory memo is explicit: “it is the sending district’s responsibility” to pay the special education increment for any student with an IEP attending through school choice. ^[1] The receiving district (Methuen, if we participate) keeps a record of services rendered and is reimbursed by the sending district through the state’s monthly local aid distribution. We would not be absorbing unknown special education costs. We would be billing for them.

This means Councilor DiZoglio had it exactly backwards. If his concern were valid, it would be an argument for Methuen to accept special education students through school choice because another district would be paying for their services, not us.

Second: a receiving district cannot legally screen out students with disabilities.

The school choice law under G.L. c. 76, §12B explicitly states that no school committee shall discriminate in the admission of any child on the basis of “physical handicap, special need or academic performance.” ^[2] DESE’s April 2019 advisory on inter-district school choice is unambiguous: school districts may not consider whether students have a disability, or the nature of their disabilities, in determining whether to admit them and similarly may not rescind any offers of admission on the basis of a student’s disability or needs. ^[3] Enforcement authority rests with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination. ^[2]

In other words, even if Methuen wanted to screen out students with special needs, which some officials appear to want, it would be illegal to do so. This is not a gray area. It is a statutory prohibition enforced by a civil rights commission.

Third: behavior or disability status is not a permissible basis for opting out under the law.

The only legally valid reason for a school committee to opt out of school choice is a lack of available space. As DESE’s advisory states directly, all school districts in Massachusetts are presumed to participate, and a committee may only withdraw if it votes to do so prior to June 1 and states its reasons with those reasons filed with the Department. ^[3] A committee that cites student behavior, disability status, academic performance, or community preference as its reason for opting out is not only legally exposed, but it is also placing the city in a position of potential civil rights liability.

Methuen has lost 200 students this school year compared to FY25. We would be hard-pressed to claim we don’t have space.

Were the Opt-Out Votes Even Procedurally Valid?

Beyond the substance of the committee’s reasoning lies a procedural question that has gone unasked: were these annual opt-out votes actually taken in compliance with the law in the first place?

The statute is clear that a public hearing must precede the vote. DESE’s 2019 advisory clarifies that the hearing and the vote can occur at the same regular school committee meeting but only under specific conditions: there must be notice to the public that this item will be discussed, and members of the public must be afforded a genuine opportunity to participate and make their positions known before the vote is taken. ^[3]

That is a meaningful legal standard, not a rubber stamp.

The question for Methuen is whether the posted agendas for those regular business meetings specifically identified a public hearing on school choice as an agenda item… not merely a vote… but a hearing, with public comment invited. If the item was listed as routine business without clearly advertising it as a public hearing at which residents could weigh in, the procedural foundation for those opt-out resolutions is, at a minimum, questionable.

Compare Methuen’s approach to how other districts handle this. Brockton, for example, posts a standalone agenda, separate from its regular business meeting, specifically titled “Public Hearing on School Choice,” with a dedicated call to order, public comment period, and discussion, all cited directly to M.G.L. Chapter 76, Section 12B. ^[4] That approach leaves no ambiguity about whether the statutory requirement was met.

DESE’s advisory on school governance reinforces why this matters: the school choice law requires the committee to vote after holding a public hearing as a condition precedent to declining to admit non-resident students. ^[5] The hearing isn’t a formality that can be folded invisibly into a regular agenda item. It is a legal prerequisite. If Methuen’s opt-out votes were taken without a properly noticed public hearing, those votes may not have been validly taken under the statute which would mean the district has been operating outside the law while paying nearly $750,000 a year for the privilege.

This is not a technicality. Public notice requirements exist so that residents, parents, taxpayers, and community members who are directly affected by this decision have a real opportunity to be heard before the vote is cast. If those residents were never meaningfully informed that a hearing was taking place, they were effectively cut out of a decision that costs their city three-quarters of a million dollars a year.

The Real Fiscal Picture

We have 200 fewer students this school year than we did in FY25. Those 200 students equate to a $3,563,400 reduction in our foundation budget (200 × our per-pupil foundation budget amount of $17,817). One hundred of that reduction was due to a decline in kindergarten enrollment which means that next year, we will likely have lower numbers in both kindergarten and first grade. The source for the $17,817 figure is: Methuen Public Schools FY26 Proposed Budget Public Hearing document, available at https://methuen.massteacher.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/45/2025/05/FY-26-Proposed-Budget-8-1.pdf

Does it make sense to open the entire district up to school choice? Maybe not. Does it make sense to offer a limited number of seats to students in kindergarten and first grade to offset some of the amount we pay out? The entire topic is still worth a serious conversation.

One argument we hear is that we don’t pay for school-choice students from the operating budget, so it doesn’t really impact the schools. While it is true that school choice students are not part of the operating budget, the $749,933 Methuen pays out is part of the chargebacks, the money added to our operating budget to reach net school spending. So the money is deducted from the amount the city must allocate to the schools’ operating budget. If we could offset this amount with tuition income from accepting students, it could reduce the chargeback amount and free up money for the district to use in the operating budget.

Another argument we have heard is “we only want Methuen kids in Methuen Public Schools.” While this is a nice sentiment, it is not a legally available option. The only reason the law allows a school committee to vote no to school choice is space limitations. To this end, any reason cited by officials, besides space, is not valid under the law. And Councilor DiZoglio’s on-the-record rationale about special education costs, as detailed above, is not only legally invalid as a reason to opt out, it is also factually inverted: it describes a problem that already exists for Methuen as a sending district, not one we would face as a receiving district.

How Accepting School Choice Students Would Help Methuen

The question isn’t just what school choice costs Methuen as a sending district. The more important question is: what could it return if Methuen chose to participate as a receiving district? The answer, supported by both state data and the experience of districts across Massachusetts, is substantial.

The Empty Seat Principle: Revenue Without New Cost

The school choice funding model is built on a straightforward economic reality: the marginal cost of educating one additional student is far lower than the average per-pupil cost. As the superintendent of Newton Public Schools explained it plainly during her district’s school choice debate:

Methuen has already paid for its buildings, its teachers, its administrators, and its buses. It has lost 200 students. Those empty seats do not reduce fixed costs but they do represent an opportunity. Each choice student who fills one of those seats brings $5,075 in tuition toward costs the district is already bearing. As the Berkshire Hills Regional School District, which has participated in school choice for nearly three decades, explains

Direct Revenue That Offsets What Methuen Already Pays Out

Tuition income from accepting choice students flows directly into the monthly local aid distribution, the same mechanism by which Methuen currently pays out $749,933 a year for its 55 students who choose other districts. ^[8] Every dollar Methuen collects in choice tuition offsets a dollar it would otherwise have to pay out or make up through local appropriation. The chargeback that drains the operating budget shrinks. The amount the city must contribute to reach net school spending decreases. That is direct fiscal relief.

Berkshire Hills offers a real-world illustration: last year the district realized approximately $1.25 million in school choice revenue and applied it to offset its annual assessment reducing what its three member towns owed by nearly $2 million combined. ^[7] Methuen is a much larger district with more capacity. The upside, even from a limited, targeted program in specific grades, could be meaningful.

Protecting Programs That Declining Enrollment Threatens

Enrollment decline does not just cut revenue, it eventually forces program cuts. When a class or grade shrinks below a viable threshold, specialized offerings become too expensive to sustain on a per-pupil basis. Research on the Massachusetts choice program has found that receiving districts are able to “offer particular niche programs when they might not be able to attract enough resident pupils to enroll in them,” making the district more efficient and more capable of delivering strong programs. ^[9] Accepting a targeted number of choice students in kindergarten and first grade, where Methuen’s losses have been steepest, helps stabilize the enrollment pipeline before those cuts become necessary.

A Competitive Signal to the Community

There is also a reputational dimension worth considering. A school committee that opts out of school choice year after year sends a message: we are not confident enough in our schools to invite outside families in. Personally, that was never the message I intended to send but, admittedly, I was uneducated.

A committee that opens targeted seats signals the opposite. As Pioneer Institute’s research on the Massachusetts program notes, the choice program was designed in part to “spur competition between districts” because competition creates incentives to improve. ^[9] Families choosing out of Methuen are already voting with their feet. Accepting choice students does not cause that problem but engaging seriously with the program is part of addressing it.

The Enrollment Liability Is Compounding Every Year

One final point that should focus the committee’s attention: Methuen’s 55 choice-out students are not a one-time problem. Under G.L. c. 76, §12B(m), once a student is admitted to a receiving district through school choice, they have a statutory right to remain through the completion of their program regardless of any future decision by either district. ^[2] The tuition bill is recalculated and re-certified every October 1 and April 1, at current rates, including any new or expanded special education services. ^[8] Those 55 students will keep generating bills for years. The only way to reduce that liability over time is to make Methuen schools compelling enough that families stop choosing out and accepting choice students in return is one concrete, immediate tool to offset the cost while that harder, longer work is done.

Looking Ahead

I look forward to the public hearing and vote on a resolution, as required by Massachusetts General Law, before June 1. This time I hope the committee will come prepared with the facts, not fears, about what school choice actually costs, what it actually requires, and what it could actually return to our district. And this time, I hope that the public hearing is properly noticed, genuinely open to residents, and conducted in a manner that meets the statutory standard not as a procedural afterthought bolted onto a regular business meeting.

The information has always been there. It is time to use it. I regret just learning it now but better late than never as they say.

Sources

[1] Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, Advisory Memorandum on Financial Administration of the Inter-District School Choice Program. Available at: https://www.doe.mass.edu/finance/schoolchoice/choicead.html

[2] Massachusetts General Laws, Chapter 76, Section 12B. Available at: https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleXII/Chapter76/section12B

[3] Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, Advisory on Inter-District School Choice Pursuant to G.L. c. 76, §12B (April 23, 2019). Available at: https://www.doe.mass.edu/lawsregs/advisory/2019-0423glc76s12b.html

[4] Brockton School Committee, Public Hearing on School Choice — Agenda (May 20, 2025). Available at: https://www.bpsma.org/apps/news/article/2071469

[5] Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, Advisory on School Governance. Available at: https://www.doe.mass.edu/lawsregs/advisory/cm1115gov.html

[6] Bryan McGonigle, “Why School Choice Doesn’t Completely Cover Per-Student Cost,” Newton Beacon, April 9, 2024. Available at: https://www.newtonbeacon.org/why-school-choice-doesnt-completely-cover-per-student-cost/

[7] “The Dollars and Cents of School Choice, Explained,” The Berkshire Edge, May 24, 2025. Available at: https://theberkshireedge.com/the-dollars-and-cents-of-school-choice-explained/

[8] Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, FY2026 Preliminary School Choice Tuition. Available at: https://www.doe.mass.edu/finance/schoolchoice/choice2026.html

[9] Roger Hatch, Inter-District School Choice in Massachusetts, Pioneer Institute White Paper No. 181 (May 2018). Available at: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED589538.pdf

Watch live at methuen.gov/livestream | Channel 8 (Comcast) or Channel 32 (Verizon) | YouTube: youtube.com/@MethuenMeetings

Full agenda: View the May 18, 2026 Agenda

Life moves fast. Methuen city government moves… differently. But if you want to have a say, you have to know what’s going on. Here’s your plain-English breakdown of Monday’s City Council meeting, so you can decide if it’s worth showing up or speaking out.

Procedural Opening

They all start the same way:

• Roll call

• Acceptance of the agenda

• Pledge of Allegiance, invocation, moment of silence

• Public participation

• Minutes from the April 21 Regular Meeting (removed from table), the April 28 Special Meeting, and the May 4 Regular Meeting

Public participation is your time. If anything below moves you, that’s your window. There’s plenty here to be moved by.

I’m always curious if the Council will reference religion in their invocation.

Appointments

Four public safety personnel are up for promotion on Monday. These are worth a look.

Fire Department: Two New Lieutenants

Firefighter Jesse Kattar is being promoted to Lieutenant. View backup. Firefighter Sean Wholley is also being promoted to Lieutenant. View backup. These are Civil Service-driven promotions, meaning the candidates went through a competitive state-run process. Both should be routine.

Police Department: Lieutenant and Sergeant Made Permanent

Acting Police Lieutenant Matthew Mueskes is being confirmed as a permanent Lieutenant. View backup. Acting Police Sergeant Matthew St. Jean is being confirmed as a permanent Sergeant. View backup. Moving from “acting” to “permanent” matters because it affects pay, benefits, and job protections. Again, Civil Service-driven, so these should move quickly.

Like I said last time, in a time where we are looking at furloughs, layoffs, and other budget reduction tools… is it wise to be promoting or should we be looking to restructure departments to run leaner in our time of need? This has absolutely nothing to do with the candidates, this is purely a financial discussion.

Mayor’s Report & CAFO Report

These sections are usually a mix of updates and councilor questions. Several recurring items are back on the agenda this week:

Searles Estate Finances (Chair Soto)

Chair Soto is again requesting a full accounting of Searles Estate expenses and revenues. Although this may surprise the Chair, I agree with her. The public deserves to know what the city has spent, and what it’s taking in, on this property.

However, the irony of Soto proactively killing any potential sale on the property is not lost on the team at Inside Methuen.

Assessor Appointment Process (Chair Soto)

Soto is asking for a legal opinion on who has the authority to appoint the Acting Assessor, City Assessor, or Chief Assessor, and what that process should look like. This matters. The Assessor’s office sets property values, and therefore tax bills, for every property owner in the city.

As a real estate investor who has been rumored to routinely strong-arm permits and approvals behind City Hall's closed doors, this is concerning. First, because she could be angling for more “friendly” appointments. More importantly, because the power to appoint for these positions are subject to Section 3.3 of the City Charter.

Paving List Online (Chair Soto)

Soto wants the city’s paving list posted publicly on the Methuen website. Simple transparency ask. If your street is (or isn’t) getting paved, you should be able to find out without calling City Hall.

Echo Lane Sewer Connection (Councilor Valley)

The RFP status on this sewer connection is being asked about… again.

Rail Trail Depot Overhangs (Councilor Valley)

Valley wants an update on the historic depot overhangs along the Rail Trail, specifically, whether the city can acquire them, what legal options exist, and whether grant money could be used to preserve them.

Is this a legitimate historic preservation question? You may recall an earlier article where we did the research and these overhangs were slated for removal several decades ago. This building is owned by the Laborers’ Union. The City should not be spending taxpayers’ money on OVERHANGS.

Route 110 Sidewalk/Bike Lane (Councilor Valley)

When does this project wrap up? Valley is asking for a completion date. Straightforward.

Searles Estate Liability (Councilor Valley)

Valley wants the City Solicitor to weigh in on liability concerns related to events being held inside the Searles Estate. Insurance and liability exposure are real questions whenever the public is using a city-owned historic building.

Oakland Avenue Bridge State Report (Councilor Santos)

The state’s inspection report on this bridge has been asked for before. It should exist. Where is it? Santos is asking again.

Our suggestion is that she go back and watch the last meeting where the Mayor explained this or, perhaps, the meeting prior to that one where he explained this in essentially the same words.

Public Safety & DPW Buildings Feasibility Study (Councilor Santos)

The study is ongoing but “it’s moving” isn’t a timeline. Santos wants a status update.

This shows a lack of understanding of government, how it works, how it moves, and what time of the year it is… BUDGET SEASON.

Parks Audit & Buildings Audit RFPs (Councilor Drew)

Are the RFPs for the parks audit and buildings audit actually out the door yet? Drew wants confirmation that the city has followed through on its commitments here.

The Mayor, at the last meeting, said this would be parked until after Budget season. It’s not unreasonable.

Pickleball Courts (Councilor MacLaren)

MacLaren is asking for an update on the public’s petition regarding pickleball courts. This has generated real community interest and the council should give it a real answer.

Forest Street Paving (Councilor MacLaren)

Is Forest Street in the paving plan for FY’26 or FY’27? A simple yes or no would do.

Public Service: Contracts

Seven contracts are on the table on Monday. This is where real city money moves.

C-26-87: Milk Street Traffic Calming — $48,600

View contract — Apex Companies, LLC will provide engineering services for a traffic calming project on Milk Street. Traffic calming usually means things like bump-outs, crosswalk improvements, or speed table design. If you live near Milk Street, this is worth paying attention to.

C-26-88: Public Safety & DPW Feasibility Studies — $75,750

View contract — Weston & Sampson will conduct expanded feasibility studies on the Police, Fire, and DPW facilities. These buildings are aging. This is the study that tells the city what it’s dealing with. Money well spent if it leads to actual action.

C-26-89: Oakland Avenue Bridge Emergency Repair — $57,503

View contract — NEL Corporation has been awarded a DCAMM emergency waiver contract to repair the Oakland Avenue Bridge. Emergency designation means the city bypassed the normal bidding process, presumably because the bridge couldn’t wait.

C-26-90: Arlington Neighborhood Streetscape — $235,500

View contract — Woodard & Curran will provide engineering for Phase I-A of the Arlington Neighborhood Streetscape Improvement Project. Streetscape improvements typically include sidewalks, lighting, and street furniture. If you’re in or near the neighborhood, this matters.

C-26-91: Veterans Memorial Park Fitness Court Slab — $34,900

View contract — Hilltown Demolition will pour a concrete slab at Veterans Memorial Park as the base for an outdoor fitness court. Parks’ infrastructure is a public good. This is a reasonably priced investment in a public space.

C-26-92: FY2026 Paving Season — $1,197,448

View contract — E.J. Paving Company (a Methuen-based company, notably) will handle this year’s paving through the Chapter 90 program. This is the big one,over $1.2 million for road resurfacing across the city. Chapter 90 is state transportation funding, so this isn’t entirely coming out of city coffers. This is where the rubber meets the road… literally.

C-26-93: Water Treatment Plant Emergency Tank Replacement — $897,677

View contract — Another DCAMM emergency waiver. Seven bulk chemical tanks, plus pipes, valves, fittings, and transfer pumps at the Water Treatment Plant need emergency replacement. This is drinking water infrastructure. You don’t let that slide. The emergency designation here is appropriate.

Unfinished Business

TR-25-75: Cooper Lane as a Public Way

View resolution — This resolution has been sitting since 2025 and is now up for a second read. Developer JR Builders wants Cooper Lane officially accepted as a public way, meaning the city would take over maintenance. Once that happens, plowing, pothole repairs, and all upkeep become the city’s responsibility indefinitely. The council needs to confirm the road was built to city standards before they vote yes. Questions about road quality should be asked before any vote is taken.

TR-26-32: Evaluating Health Insurance Options Under Chapter 32B

View resolution — This resolution, coming off the table - maybe, would have Methuen formally adopt sections 21–23 of Chapter 32B of Mass. General Laws. What that means in plain English: it opens the door to a formal process for evaluating changes to employee and retiree health insurance. This can affect city workers and their families significantly. Worth watching.

Let’s be clear what this DOES NOT do… it does not give the Mayor unilateral authority to move the health insurance to GIC or anything else. This merely gives him the ability to explore GIC and other options. Hopefully, this will run cooperatively with the PEC.

TR-26-49: PACE Massachusetts Clean Energy Program

View resolution — This is a second read and should an easy yes. As a refresher, PACE stands for Property Assessed Clean Energy. Here’s how it works: a business wants to upgrade to solar panels, better HVAC, or LED lighting but doesn’t want to pay up front. A private lender finances the project, and the business repays through a special line on their property tax bill over up to 20 years. If the building is sold, the assessment transfers to the new owner.

For Methuen to allow this, the city has to opt in, that’s what this vote does. The city takes on zero financial risk. Private capital funds it all. 82 Massachusetts municipalities have already signed on, including Lowell, North Andover, and Peabody. This is a no-brainer for local businesses and a good economic development tool. Expect it to pass.

TO-26-11: Pest Control for Demolition and Commercial Waste

View ordinance — Second read. Sponsored by Councilor DiZoglio. Simple concept: when a building is demolished or a commercial waste operation runs nearby, rats get displaced into surrounding neighborhoods. This ordinance puts the cost and responsibility of pest control on whoever is doing the demolition or running the waste operation, not on the neighbors stuck dealing with the aftermath. The fine is $300 per day per offense. The Board of Health sets the standards. Good public health legislation.

TO-26-13: Nepotism Ordinance (as amended)

View ordinance — It’s back again. It will be interesting to see if this makes it off the Table this time. Chair Soto’s updated nepotism ordinance is back, with amendments. The ordinance expands the definition of “family member” to include first cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces, and nephews which is broader than what state law covers. It bars family members of department heads from working in the same department, and if two city employees become family members after passage, one has to transfer out within 90 days.

Police and Fire are carved out and that’s actually legally required because those departments operate under Massachusetts Civil Service law, which the city cannot override locally. That exemption isn’t suspicious; it’s mandatory.

What to watch: the 90-day transfer requirement is real employment disruption with real legal exposure, and the ordinance is silent on whether the city is obligated to make a transfer spot available. Also, 30 days to disclose all existing family relationships across city departments is a very tight window. The council should press on with the implementation details before voting.

New Business

TR-26-50: Home Rule Petition on Seniority-Based Reinstatement

View resolution — Sponsored by Chair Soto, Councilors DiZoglio and Valley, and Mayor Beauregard. This resolution asks the state legislature for permission to reinstate laid-off city employees by seniority within their departmental unit. Home Rule Petitions are how Massachusetts cities ask for powers that state law doesn’t automatically grant. If layoffs happen, or have already happened, this would govern the order in which people get their jobs back. This is a significant labor and employment policy.

TR-26-51: $15,200 Fire Department SAFE Grant

View resolution — Requested by Mayor Beauregard and Fire Chief Toto. The state Department of Fire Services is awarding Methuen $15,200 through its SAFE (Student Awareness of Fire Education) and Senior SAFE programs. Free money, no city match required, goes directly to fire safety education. Easy yes.

TO-26-14: Self-Service Gas Station Ordinance

View ordinance — Requested by Councilor DiZoglio and Police Chief McNamara. This ordinance adds rules for self-service gas stations to the city’s municipal code. The details matter here as self-service stations have specific safety and operational requirements. With Chief McNamara’s name attached, this is likely focused on safety and crime prevention at gas station locations. This is its first reading, so it won’t get a final vote on Monday.

Executive Session… The One to Watch

After all regular business concludes, the Council will vote to enter executive session, closed to the public, with the Mayor and City Solicitor. The reason cited is Exemption 7, which is the exemption for complying with legal obligations and court rules.

The specific matter: Commonwealth v. Joseph Solomon, two Essex County Superior Court cases (docket numbers 2377CR00451 and 2377CR00452). The council will not reconvene in open session afterward regardless of whatever happens in executive session ends the night.

Oh, to be a fly on that wall….

Keep an eye out for the meeting recap on Tuesday.

When the Mayor presents a budget number for education spending, and when the School Department reports its spending to the state, those two figures are not always the same. That gap can confuse residents, School Committee members, and even elected officials. At the center of that confusion is a mechanism called chargebacks — and understanding how they work is essential to understanding how Methuen, and really every district, funds public schools.

What Is a Chargeback?

A chargeback is a city expenditure made on behalf of the School Department that gets counted as education spending. These are not line items in the School Department's own budget. Instead, they are costs the City of Methuen pays directly, through services provided by other city departments, that are then attributed to the schools when reporting to the state.

Examples include the School Department's share of the City Auditor's office (which no longer exists), the Treasurer/Tax Collector's office, contributions to the city's retirement system, group health insurance, building insurance premiums, and the cost of School Resource Officers provided by the Police Department.

None of these dollars flow through the School Department's budget. But under Massachusetts law, they count toward what is called Net School Spending. Net School Spending is the minimum amount a municipality is required to spend on education each year which is set by the Commonwealth.

Why Does This Create Confusion?

When the Mayor announces a school budget number, that figure typically reflects what is appropriated directly to the School Department, net and non-net spending. Chargebacks are handled separately, through city departmental budgets, and are often not part of that public conversation.

When Methuen reports its education spending to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) at the end of each fiscal year, chargebacks are included in that total. This means the number residents hear in budget season and the number reported to the state can look quite different… not because of any error, but because they are measuring different things.

Lately, you've heard conversation about the $114M funding number the Mayor allocated to the schools. This breaks down to about $103M net school spending and $11M non-net spending (transportation costs, mostly). The difference between our required net school spending of about $124M and the current $103M is the total of the chargebacks.

This distinction matters. Net School Spending compliance is a legal requirement in Massachusetts. Meeting it, or failing to, has real consequences for the district.

The Agreement Behind the Chargebacks

The specific services and percentages that make up Methuen's chargebacks are governed by a formal agreement between the Mayor and the Superintendent. The document on file is titled Agreement on City of Methuen Expenditures for the Methuen School Department, and it covers fiscal years 2019 through 2021.

That agreement, now several years past its intended review period, was supposed to be revisited every three years, prior to the budget development process. By multiple accounts, a revised version has been sitting with the City's Chief Administrative and Finance Officer (CAFO) since at least January of this year, awaiting action.

You can see that document here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/10a7KR0tzZm0TJ-S8gMGKM6_BoKYrzbf-/view?usp=drivesdk

The stakes of an outdated agreement are practical, not just procedural. Former School Committee members and current committee members have noted that the existing document does not accurately reflect the current reality: there are services listed in the agreement that the School Department no longer uses, and services the School Department does use that are not captured in the agreement. Until the document is updated, the formula used to calculate chargebacks, and therefore net school spending, may not reflect what is actually happening on the ground.

Who Is Responsible?

Ultimately, the agreement requires sign-off from both the Mayor and the Superintendent, as the signatures on the current document reflect. In practice, the work of developing and maintaining it is a collective effort involving the Superintendent, the Mayor's office, and the CAFO.

The agreement's own language requires it be reviewed every three years, prior to the budget development process. The current document expired after FY21. That means Methuen has been operating under a chargeback agreement that is, by its own terms, overdue for revision while budget season comes and goes each year.

What Residents Should Know

Chargebacks are not unusual. Most Massachusetts municipalities use a similar mechanism to account for shared city-school services. The state's own guidance provides methodology for how these costs should be calculated and reported.

But the accuracy of that accounting depends on the underlying agreement being current and correct. An outdated agreement creates risk, not necessarily of wrongdoing, but of miscalculation. Services that have changed, costs that have shifted, and arrangements that no longer exist can all distort the final number reported to DESE. A finding from DESE that we missed our Net School Spending could cause serious issues for the City in terms of oversight and funds received.

For residents trying to evaluate whether Methuen is adequately funding its schools, understanding chargebacks is a necessary first step. The headline budget number is only part of the picture. The full picture includes what the city spends on the schools' behalf, and whether the agreement governing that spending actually reflects today's reality.

At a recent Methuen School Committee meeting, Mayor Beauregard said something that no mayor in this city has said before. Facing a vote on the school budget he had proposed, he told the committee exactly what he thought of it:

“I am not voting tonight on something I think is good. I’m not in favor of it. If I weren’t the mayor and didn’t have a fiduciary obligation to submit a balanced budget to the council, I would be voting no. I’d probably be wearing a red shirt right now on the other side of this podium.

Given the position that I am in, I have to present a balanced budget to the council. I have to make that very difficult choice. I would love to join you, I truly would, but I can’t.”

That honesty deserves genuine credit. The mayor said the quiet thing out loud, in a public meeting. This is something that the ongoing Charter Review Committee opted to ignore in the revamp of our Charter and how the structure of Methuen’s government. The simple fact is that the roles of mayor and school committee member are fundamentally in conflict and no person can serve both faithfully at the same time. He was right. And his candor makes the case for a reform that Methuen’s Charter Review Committee should act on.

How We Got Here: A Short History

To understand why the mayor chairs the school committee, it helps to trace how the charter arrived at that arrangement, because it was not always this way and it did not happen by accident.

Methuen’s original Home Rule Charter, effective in 1978, put a city council member on the school committee as its seventh seat. That experiment did not last long. In 1981, Methuen voters eliminated the appointed council seat and replaced it with a sixth elected at-large member, leaving the committee fully elected and fully independent.[1]

That arrangement held for fifteen years. Then, in 1993, Methuen made its most significant governance change in decades: it converted from a town manager form of government to an elected mayor. The position of mayor was new to Methuen in the modern era, and with it came questions about how the mayor would relate to the school committee.[2]

The answer came in 1996. The city council passed Resolution #3745, which was submitted to the General Court as a home rule petition. The legislature enacted it as Chapter 148 of the Acts and Resolves of 1996. Methuen voters ratified it at a special election that November. The new law rewrote Article 4, Section 4-1(a) of the charter to read that the mayor shall serve as the seventh member of the school committee and shall also serve as the chairman thereof with full power to vote.[3]

In plain English: the voters, in 1996, amended their own charter to give the newly created mayor a seat at the table and the gavel. The stated rationale at the time appears to have been coordination: a mayor who was also committee chair could better align the school budget with the city’s overall fiscal plan. The logic was that tighter executive involvement would reduce the friction between city hall and the school department.

Nearly thirty years of experience suggests the opposite has been true. What the 1996 amendment created was not coordination but a structural conflict, one that Mayor Beauregard himself has now publicly acknowledged.

What the Charter Actually Says

The current charter makes the mayor not just a member of the school committee but its presiding officer a.k.a the Chair. Under Article 4, Section 4-2, the chair prepares the agenda for every meeting, presides and decides all questions of order, and appoints every member of every school committee subcommittee, standing or special.[4] The six elected members of the committee can vote, but the mayor sets the agenda, controls the floor, and determines who sits on every subcommittee that does the committee’s detailed work. This does not happen today. The superintendent’s office controls the agenda with input from the whole body and subcommittees are voted appointments.

The mayor is also, under Article 6 of the charter, the officer who submits the school department’s budget to the city council as part of the overall municipal budget.[5] The school committee submits its request to the mayor first, and the mayor then decides what to present to the council.[6] The council can reduce that figure but, except on the mayor’s own recommendation, cannot increase it. Althrough, the functional reality is that the School Committee and School Administration sit ideally by waiting for a mayor to provide a budget number.

The mayor thus controls the budget at every stage: receiving the committee’s request, deciding what to forward to the council, and presiding over the committee that is supposed to advocate for the schools.

That is the structure Mayor Beauregard described when he said he could not vote his conscience because of the position he holds. He was not complaining about a bad situation. He was accurately describing the architecture of a conflict that the charter built in.

The Mayor Should Not Vote

The mayor’s remarks raise a question that goes beyond the chairmanship: should the mayor be a voting member of the school committee at all?

Standard governance practice treats conflicts of interest as disqualifying for specific votes. A board member with a financial stake in a decision is expected to recuse themselves. The mayor of Methuen has a direct structural stake in every school budget vote, because the mayor is the official who proposed the budget and who is legally responsible for submitting a balanced plan to the city council. When the mayor votes to approve the budget, it is a self-ratifying act. When the mayor votes against it, as he indicated he wished he could do, it would be a mayor publicly repudiating his own fiscal edict.

Mayor Beauregard essentially issued a public recusal statement from the table. He told the committee he wished he could vote differently but could not because of the position he holds. The logical conclusion of his own statement is that the position he holds is incompatible with the vote he is being asked to cast. If the mayor himself recognizes that, the charter should reflect it.

What the Charter Review Committee Should Do (Should Have Done)

Methuen’s Charter Review Committee presented its near-final draft at a public hearing on April 9, 2026.[7] That draft does not propose any substantive changes to Article 4. The mayor remains the seventh member, the president, and a full voting member of the school committee.[8]

That is a missed opportunity and, frankly, a big mistake. Most Massachusetts cities and towns that have school committees do not give the mayor a seat or a gavel. The Massachusetts Association of School Committee’s own guidance notes that in most communities the committee elects its own officers, and that the mayoral chairmanship is an exception rather than the rule.[9] Methuen created this exception in 1996 for reasons that made sense in theory but have not worked in practice.

The fix the committee should/should have recommend(ed) is straightforward: amend Article 4 to remove the mayor as a member and presiding officer of the school committee. The Mayor’s role at the School Committee table should be the same as his role at the City Council table. Both bodies, the School Committee and the City Council, are legislative bodies and to treat them differently is a double standard in the city's governing document and one that gives the mayor a vote over the schools that he is explicitly denied over the other legislative body of city government. That power should belong to someone whose only obligation is to the committee’s educational mission.

Taking the Mayor at His Word

Mayor Beauregard did something genuinely valuable at that meeting. He named the conflict honestly and publicly in a way that invites a real conversation about the structure of governance in this city. The right response from the charter review committee would be to not to let this moment pass unremarked. If the mayor believes enough to make such a public statement regarding how the structure places him in an impossible position, the structure should be reexamined.

The 1996 amendment that created this arrangement was approved by voters. Removing it will also require voter approval. The Charter Review Committee’s job is to recommend what should go on the ballot. Mayor Beauregard, from the seat of the Chair of the School Committee, has already made the case for putting this question before the people of Methuen.

Sources

[1] Methuen Home Rule Charter, Article 4, Section 4-1(a). Chapter 148 of the Acts and Resolves of 1996, enacted by the General Court and accepted by Methuen voters November 5, 1996.

[2] Methuen Home Rule Charter, Article 4, Section 4-2(b). The charter vests in the President the power to prepare agendas, preside at all meetings, decide all questions of order, and appoint all committee members, standing or special.

[3] Methuen Home Rule Charter (as amended), Article 4, Section 4-1(a) and Section 4-2. Under the current charter the mayor is both seventh member and President. The 2026 Charter Review Committee draft (HRC_CLEAN.pdf, April 9, 2026 public hearing) retains this structure unchanged.

[4] The Boston Globe, “Methuen mayor, School Committee divided over district budget,” June 13, 2025.

[5] CBS Boston / WBZ-TV, “Methuen, Massachusetts struggling to close $9.6M school budget gap,” May 2025.

[6] Methuen Home Rule Charter, Article 6, Section 6-3. The school committee submits its budget to the mayor at least 30 days before the mayor submits the overall city budget to the city council.

[7] Methuen Home Rule Charter, Article 4, Section 4-7(a); Article 6, Section 6-4. The city council adopts the budget, but may not increase any line item except on recommendation of the mayor.

[8] Eagle Tribune, “Public hearing on charter changes April 9,” March 26, 2026. The article describes the proposed charter overhaul and notes the IT consolidation dispute as a motivating example of inter-departmental conflict.

[9] Massachusetts Association of School Committees, Member Handbook. The MASC notes that in some cities the mayor presides as chairman of the school committee, while in most communities the committee elects its own officers.

Central District City Councilor Yanilda Santos appeared in Salem, NH court this morning to face the DUI charge stemming from her January arrest, and left with a plea deal that keeps a DUI off her record but not without consequences.

Prior to trial, Santos' attorney negotiated an agreement with the District Attorney's office. She had a lot working in her favor… mainly that was her first offense and she has no record prior.

Santos pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of reckless driving and will pay a fine. She had already completed a safe driving course ahead of the court date. In addition to the fine, two months were added onto the six-month license suspension she already received for refusing the breathalyzer at the scene bringing her total suspension to eight months which started back immediately following the arrest.

Contrary to popular belief and comments circulating on social media, the breathalyzer refusal suspension and subsequent additional 2 months is not limited to New Hampshire. Former Salem, NH prosecutor Jason Grosky weighed in on the case via Facebook, clarifying what the cross-state impact looks like for a Massachusetts resident like Santos:

"NH suspends the right to operate, then notifies the Mass RMV. Mass will then impose a reciprocal license suspension and not reinstate the license til all NH requirements are satisfied and NH reinstates the right to operate here."

In other words, Santos will not be able to legally drive in Massachusetts either until she has fully satisfied New Hampshire's requirements and her driving privileges are restored there first.

For background on the original arrest, [read our earlier report here:

https://www.insidemethuen.com/p/central-district-council-arrested

Now that the case is closed, one question remains open: what was worth redacting?

When we submitted a Right to Know request for the police records from that night, what came back was redacted with no statutory exemptions cited to justify it. We formally pushed back, requesting either the unredacted records or a legal explanation for each redaction.

Salem responded on March 9th… not with answers, but with a two-page letter citing a broad range of possible exemptions, from personal identifying information and CJIS restrictions, to body camera footage rules and crime victim privacy protections, and asked for up to 90 more days to respond.

The letter doesn't tell us what was redacted or why. It tells us what could justify a redaction… which is a different thing entirely.

The case being settled doesn't make that question go away. It may be nothing. There may be a perfectly routine explanation for every blacked-out line. But under New Hampshire's Right-to-Know Law, the burden is on the government to say so and they haven't. We'll keep asking.

The city is in the middle of a budget crisis that, if we are being honest with ourselves, we all knew was coming 2 budget cycles ago. The warnings were there two years ago. The revenue trends were visible. The structural gaps between what Methuen spends and what it takes in were not a secret hidden in the CAFOs drawer. They were hiding in plain sight. And yet, here we are with Emmy-winning performances for acting surprised

.

What follows is not an attempt to assign blame to any single person or administration. I feel like I’ve made it clear that this current administration has done more than earlier to help drive education specifically… but I will admit it still has its faults. It is something harder and more useful: an accounting of the tools we had available and did not use, and an argument that the path forward requires a different kind of discipline than we have shown.

What We Could Have Done and Did Not

Let us start with department restructuring. There was a moment, and there still is though the window is narrowing, where a serious look at how the city deploys its Police, Fire, DPW, and School (but it’s really too late for schools at this point) and other departments resources could have produced real savings. The only genuine attempt was an executive order on IT consolidation, and it was dead on arrival, not because the idea was wrong, but because of how it was delivered. There were also some early efforts to connect DPW with the schools on outside maintenance, a reasonable idea, but it materialized largely as a reaction to school conditions and short-staffing problems rather than as a proactive efficiency play. That is the difference between strategy and scrambling.

Then there is the grant question. A dedicated grant writer, hired at the start of FY26, could realistically be generating new revenue right now, federal and state dollars that could be dedicated to specific programs, freeing up municipal funds for the operating and personnel budgets where the pressure is greatest. Grant writing is not glamorous. It does not generate headlines. But money is money, and we left it on the table. To the mayor’s credit, they posted the position and nobody wanted the job. Personally, I can’t say that I blame them. Methuen hasn’t exactly created the most welcoming atmosphere. But running with our theme of honesty and retrospective … this was still 2 years too late and the pivot that’s occurring now could have occurred much earlier and it could have been a body in the chair at the beginning of the fiscal year.

On economic development: the city has finally started looking seriously at zoning. That is good. It is also late. A structured commercial attraction campaign, a real blitz with targeted outreach, incentive packages, and a clear pitch, could have been in motion two years ago when the fiscal forecast first turned worrying. We knew the day was coming. The urgency simply was not there yet, so the urgency did not come. To be clear, I’m not talking about more housing. We need to be targeting more business to grow our commercial tax base. The commercial tax base in Methuen hovers around 12 to 14% but all reputable sources suggested should be up in the mid mid high twenties.

The Longer List of Missed Opportunities

Beyond those headline failures, there is a longer list of tools that never made it off the shelf:

• Fee schedule audits. Many municipalities have not updated permit, licensing, or inspection fees in years. That is uncollected revenue sitting in a drawer. These departments should not be operating at the margin they do.

• Tax delinquency collection push. Money already owed to the city, unpaid taxes, fees, and fines, could have been systematically recovered.

• Shared services with neighboring communities. Splitting costs on specialized staff, dispatch, or heavy equipment does not require a merger. It requires a phone call and a will to cooperate.

• Monetizing underutilized assets. Surplus land (which admittedly we don’t have much of), unused municipal buildings (most of which are falling apart or in decrepit repair), billboard and cell tower leases represent real value sitting idle. With all of the miles of highways running through Methuen, there was an opportunity for expansion here.

• Multi-year budget forecasting. A three-year projection model would have made the FY27 problem visible and actionable in FY25, when there was still room to maneuver.

• Zero-based budgeting in select departments. Rather than rolling last year’s numbers forward, forcing even one or two departments to justify every line from scratch often surfaces savings that routine budgeting never finds.

• Early retirement incentives. A cohort of higher-salaried employees eligible to retire, given a structured incentive, can reduce payroll costs while creating room to right-size or hire at lower salary levels. To the mayor’s credit, he tried to bring this forward and it appears to have died on the vine courtesy of the council.

• Business retention programs. Losing an anchor business is often more financially damaging than failing to recruit a new one. Methuen has no formal program to prevent it.

The Real Problem Is Not the Budget. It Is the Clock.

None of the items above are exotic or untested. They are standard tools of municipal fiscal management. The reason they were not deployed is not ignorance. It is timing. Budget crises have a way of compressing time until the only options left are the bad ones: cuts to services people rely on, tax increases that hit residents who are already stretched, or deferred maintenance that turns today’s savings into tomorrow’s capital crisis. This should be our new city motto because it’s what we have been doing for decades.

Effective fiscal planning is, at its core, a discipline of acting before you have to. The city knew two years ago that this day was coming. What was missing was not information. It was the institutional will to treat a future problem with the same urgency as a present one.

What Comes Next

The FY27 budget will get passed. It will be painful. Some version of cuts, revenue increases, or both will happen, and the community will absorb it. That part is inevitable now. … Unless the state steps up at some point in the very near future to help Methuen and the numerous other communities suffering.

What is not yet determined is whether FY28 looks the same. The city has an opportunity right now, in the middle of this crisis, to put in place the structures that prevent the next one. Multi-year forecasting. A grant writer. A real economic development strategy tied to zoning reform. Shared services agreements with neighboring communities. Fee and delinquency audits. These are not transformational ideas. They are basic competencies that cities our size should have as a matter of course.

The question for the council, the mayor’s office, and frankly for the residents who elect them, is simple: will this budget season be a turning point, or will it be a rehearsal for the same crisis in three years? If history teaches us anything… we already know the answer to this but I am choosing to have faith in the Mayor for now.

Methuen deserves a budget process that starts 24 months early, not 24 days early. It is time to build one.

Full agenda with attachments: Here
Recording of Meeting on Youtube: Here

The Council met Monday night for its regular May meeting. All members were present and accounted for which made the crowd composed of largely senior citizens happy. The agenda was amended early by request of Councilor Simard who motioned to move the tipping fee transfer up to immediately follow the Mayor’s Report, as he knew that is why everyone was there. This was seconded by Valley, and that passed unanimously. A moment of silence was observed for a member of the community connected to the Pesce family and Councilor Santos offered words of wisdom. There was no mention of God, for those keeping track.

Public Participation

The themes were consistent: trash, accountability, and the expectation that elected officials show up and do the job.

Cornelius Smith identified himself as a business owner and equipment operator. He wants city equipment liquidated rather than left sitting in the DPW yard where it will, in his words, turn to junk and get stripped.

Linda Borngruino took a quick shot at absent councilors from the last meeting and called for them to respect the Mayor’s time, do their jobs, or resign. She called them a disgrace.

Barbara Ell echoed the same sentiment: step down if you won’t show up.

Dottie Pepe kept it personal. “I’m disappointed.” She acknowledged that everyone is busy, but pointed out that public housing residents are dealing with trash problems severe enough to attract rats, and invited councilors to come see the mess for themselves. “You wanted this job to make a difference. Be here.”

Debra Ward asked the Council to consider residents who can’t manage their own trash without support.

Steven Tarpino addressed the ongoing pickleball court situation, citing noise impacts on the surrounding neighborhood. He referenced other communities wrestling with the same issue and suggested this could end up in court.

Linda Soucy asked everyone — including on social media — to take a step back. Stop assigning blame. Focus on getting things done. She called for a social media pause to reset the tone. A reasonable ask.

Kathy Woekel came with receipts — literally. She read from SeeClickFix messages documenting a guardrail issue and made clear she is not impressed with that platform’s interface. To put it mildly.

Lisa Gomez has done considerable trash cleanup work on her own. She’s fed up with Harvey and the ongoing failure to pick up large, illegally dumped items behind her home.

Jack Burke addressed the nepotism ordinance. His critique was substantive: the ordinance is flawed. It lacks consequences, has no complaint procedure, no investigation authority, and doesn’t apply to school department hiring. He also didn’t acknowledge that the stated goal of the ordinance was to address the summer jobs issue specifically. Still, the structural critique stands.

Dan Thibault said he’s embarrassed by the trash situation and doesn’t want to keep cleaning up after the trash company, but he’s worried about what happens if it doesn’t get resolved.

Organizational Business

Councilor Soto made a statement about meeting access and then suggested the Mayor, not the Council, called the meeting that 3 members missed.

This was vaguely stated at best and intentionally misleading at worst. The Chair runs the Council’s meeting schedule, not the Mayor. The Mayor may request a meeting but the Chair approves and schedules. It’s in the council rules and procedures. The Mayor can’t force the council to meet.

Minutes

Valley objected to the approval of the minutes and moved to include a statement made by the Chair to the Mayor in the minutes from the April 21 meeting. Seconded by Santos. Passed unanimously.

A note on the minutes in general: they are not statutorily required to be verbatim and rarely add meaningful value to the public record.

Appointments

Kevin Barry — Promoted to Deputy Fire Chief

Moved by Pesce, seconded by DiZoglio. The Fire Chief recommended Barry. The position is budgeted. Councilor Drew confirmed the promotion structure is set by the union contract as it requires how many of each position need to be on each shift. Soto asked about the chain of command; the Chief explained the lieutenant-to-deputy pathway, with the lieutenant's appointment coming to the Council at a future meeting. Passed unanimously.

Mayor’s Report

The Mayor covered a lot of ground:

PACE Massachusetts: on the agenda later tonight (and covered below).

Special Education / Out-of-District Spending: The Mayor announced an RFP for a targeted review of out-of-district special ed spending systems. He was clear: this is not a discontinuation of services. It’s a review. The out-of-district cost is $18 million in FY26. One school placement alone runs $3.5 million for 13 students. The Constellation program, which would bring some of those services in-house, carries a $2.7 million startup cost with no guaranteed savings. There is also an option on the table to explore becoming a school choice district.

DiZoglio asked whether Branch Street could be used to pursue grants for in-house special ed. The Mayor confirmed it’s being explored through the Constellation program.

Health Insurance: The city is running at a 110% loss ratio. For every dollar collected, $1.10 goes out in claims, he explained. The Mayor is advocating for a resolution that would allow the administration to explore other options stating “the status quo isn’t working. Councilor Drew asked why GIC is being pushed when employees are clearly pushing back. The Mayor acknowledged a 2019 analysis projected $3 million in savings under GIC and said an updated analysis is needed. Drew also asked about the historical health insurance trust fund funding patterns. The Mayor acknowledged the city has consistently run over budget on health costs and that planning a budget overrun into the budget itself creates its own problems as it’s uncapped, uncontrollable, and unpredictable with any accuracy.

Economic Development / Zoning: The Mayor announced work with a team to revisit and revise the city’s zoning ordinance, noting Methuen has one of the lowest commercial tax rates in the region. Councilor Marsan asked to be included on the team. Done.

Other announcements: School Committee member Baez was recognized for organizing a job fair. Congresswoman Trahan will visit the Arlington neighborhood on Wednesday and an arts and music festival is scheduled for May 14th at the Senior Center.

Tipping Fees: TR-26-45 (As Amended)

A Resolution Authorizing a Transfer of $850,000 from Free Cash to DPW Solid Waste Disposal Expenses

If you’ve been following the trash saga, you know the backstory. This transfer was needed to cover tipping fees for the remainder of FY26 after the line item was underfunded in the budget. It failed on April 21. It came back tonight and the crowd came for it.

On reconsideration: Moved by Drew, seconded by Simard. The City Solicitor initially characterized this as a second read upon reconsideration. The Mayor disagreed agruing a failed vote doesn’t count as a first read, so this required an Emergency Preamble Authorization (EPA). The Solicitor ultimately agreed the Mayor was right.

DiZoglio invited a Harvey representative to the podium. The rep clarified that Harvey never said they would stop trash pickup and that they found out about that claim on social media. DiZoglio asked about the extra barrels situation and the inconsistency in fee payments. The Harvey rep estimated approximately 4,500 extra barrels are out in the city.

The Mayor pushed back on that number: those 4,500 barrels cover both trash and recycling, and the city doesn’t charge for recycling. The trash ordinance also has no language about cart renewal, which he said needs to be corrected. He also confirmed the city is not past due on invoices, a fact Valley confirmed with Harvey directly.

Councilor Drew, clearly frustrated, cut through the back-and-forth: the issue tonight is moving $850,000 into the account to pay the bill. Whatever isn’t spent comes back to free cash. Just vote. Spoiler aler… They didn’t. The conversation continued to sway in and out of relevance to the point of the resolution at hand for a while longer.

Councilor Marsan didn’t want to take the full amount from free cash but couldn’t identify an alternative and talked in circles without making an amendment while stating he would like an amendment. It was interesting.

Councilor Pesce then became a dancer partner for Councilor Marsan’s circle dance but eventually moved to amend the resolution to add language mirroring TR-26-48 which sets up a requirement for a monthly report to the Council on actions taken and invoices paid. Seconded by Drew. CAFO confirmed she can work with that. Amendment passed unanimously. It took her a bit to get there but ultimately this was a good play.

Main motion as amended — EPA required. Pesce asked what the risk was if the EPA failed. The Mayor asked the Council to just do it. Both the EPA and the amended resolution passed unanimously.

Worth noting: Santos voted no on reconsideration but yes on the final vote. Make of that what you will.

CAFO Report

The CAFO walked through how tonnage and trash billing projections work at the request of Chair Soto. This has been discussed now at 2 past meetings but she was only present for one of them. Councilor Valley asked about a grant-funded position. No major developments and nothing really noteworthy.

Requests of Councilors

Quick status updates on outstanding items:

• Echo Lane Sewer Connection: Proposal requested. Mayor has a timeline in an email and will share it.

• Oakland Avenue Bridge: Inspection report received; repairs to come from CIP. No change from last meeting.

• Public Safety Buildings / DPW Feasibility Study: No update.

• New Trash Barrel Order: Arrived. Distribution is ongoing.

• Barrel Fee Collection (Years 2, 3, 4): No update provided.

• Lowell and East Capitol Street Construction: Paving expected by end of May; final paving scheduled for August.

• Parks and Buildings Audit RFPs: Parked until after the budget season.

• Pickleball Court Concerns: Still in subcommittee. Mayor said he’s all ears.

• 2-Hour Downtown Parking (DiZoglio): Chief MacNamara wasn’t present; tabled for now. DiZoglio noted this is about downtown employees and salon clients whose appointments run longer than two hours.

• Lowell Street Bridge: Flagged by DiZoglio for further discussion.

• Swan and Jackson Street Sign: New request tonight. Perry had a quote. Just needs a funding source.

On pickleball: what was supposed to be a brief update turned into a 20-plus minute off-agenda discussion involving the entire council, the Recreation Director, and public comment from a representative of the neighborhood residents who left disappointed. Councilor Drew shared that changes are being explored that include adjusted hours, a reservation system for all six courts, and silent paddles, all of which were apparently decided 45 minutes before the meeting at the Subcommittee meeting. A discussion around a sound study being needed before anything is finalized. The mayor wants to talk to Recreation Director Angelo before any decisions are made. Councilor Pesce asked whether alternative locations have been explored (they haven’t) and whether courts can be limited to Methuen residents (they can).

None of this was on the agenda. The Requests of Councilors section is not the place for substantive policy deliberation. This discussion, given the level of engagement it received, was almost certainly an open meeting law violation.

Other Officers and Committee Reports

• Simard on Veterans: Four applications received for the VSO position.

• Marsan Economic development: subcommittee discussed zoning, ADUs, and planning/permitting with Merrimack Valley Planning.

• Drew Parks: No further update from subcommittee.

Old Business

TR-25-75 (Cooper Lane as a Public Way): Tabled for a joint meeting.

TR-26-42: Seasonal Restroom Policy for Non-City Use of Athletic Fields. Moved by Valley, seconded by Pesce. Recreation Director Angelo was aware of the original complaint that prompted this. This was a second read do there was no real conversation. Passed unanimously.

TR-26-43: Transfer of $42,500 to Fund Grant Writing Services. Moved by Pesce, seconded by Santos. The Mayor confirmed grant writing services are fully funded in the FY27 budget and this contract will come back to the Council for approval once a vendor is selected. Valley was concerned $42,500 isn’t enough; the Mayor noted it’s consistent with what Haverhill spends (~$150K annually). This was also a second read do there was no real conversation. Passed unanimously.

TR-26-44: Transfer of $40,000 from Free Cash to Fund Payroll Processing. Moved by Valley, seconded by Santos. Another second read with no discussion. Passed unanimously.

TR-26-46: Acceptance of $75,000 Brownfields Redevelopment Fund Grant from MassDevelopment. Moved by Valley, seconded by Santos. Valley asked what happens if the property is sold and the CAFO confirmed the funds would be returned. Passed unanimously.

TR-26-47: Letter of Support for the State Auditor’s Audit of the Legislature (Question 1). Moved by Drew, seconded by Santos. No discussion. Passed unanimously.

TO-26-13 (Nepotism Ordinance Amendment): This was awkward. Everyone around the table sat with their heads down as the Chair called for her beloved nepo resolution. No one moved it off the table. It stays.

The photo below shows this from minute mark 4:12:55 of the youtube recording.

New Business

TR-26-49: PACE Massachusetts (Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy)

A representative from the program explained how it works: no public funds are used; financing is attached to the property and repaid through a tax assessment the city collects and remits to PACE. Minimum project size is $250,000; there is no cap (creditworthiness is the limit). Drew confirmed no public funds are at risk and asked the CAFO if the city can administer the lien collection and she said yes. Marsan asked about marketing materials for local businesses; the Mayor confirmed they’re attached to the agenda. Passed unanimously.

TO-26-11: Pest Control Ordinance for Demolition, Site Clearing, and Commercial Waste

Moved by Drew, seconded by Santos. DiZoglio has been working on this since February with the Health Department. Health Director Caeli gave background: ongoing issues with new developments, where builders commit to pest control measures and don’t follow through. Councilor Simard asked about recourse for past violations. Passed unanimously.

The Bottom Line

Tonight’s meeting had real business… the tipping fee transfer got done, PACE passed, the pest control ordinance moved forward, and several transfers were cleaned up. The Barry promotion sailed through without drama.

What didn’t work: the pickleball discussion hijacked the Requests of Councilors section for well over 20 minutes without being on the agenda, a neighborhood gets no real answers or even clear path forward, and Councilor Soto’s procedural statement early in the meeting got the basic facts wrong about who calls a regular meeting.

The tipping fee vote, unanimous in the end, was the right outcome. Getting there took longer than it needed to. Councilor Drew had it right from the beginning: move the money, pay the bill, return whatever’s left to free cash. It really is that simple.

The live agenda with backup attachments is available at cityofmethuen.net. Inside Methuen is an independent local publication. Corrections and updates welcome.

Watch live at methuen.gov/livestream | Channel 8 (Comcast) or Channel 32 (Verizon) | YouTube: youtube.com/@MethuenMeetings

Full agenda: View the May 4, 2026 Agenda

It’s hard to keep up with life, never mind the political circus Methuen keeps running. You have stuff to do... we know that. The City Councilors know too. Here is your quick breakdown of the upcoming Council meeting agenda and cliffnotes on why it’s important.

The more you know, the more you can plan your time, your comments, and be effective.

Procedural Opening

They all start the same way:

• Roll call

• Acceptance of the agenda

• Pledge of Allegiance, invocation, moment of silence,

• Public participation,

• Acceptance of minutes from the April 21 meeting.

Same as always. Public participation is your time. Step up if something on this agenda moves you. There is plenty to be moved by tonight.

Something I noticed while looking at the agenda is that there is nothing for proclamation. I’m curious to see if the Council surprises us with one.

Appointments

Kevin Barry Promoted to Deputy Fire Chief

View backup document

This one is straightforward and well-earned. Kevin Barry is a lifelong Methuen resident with over 22 years in the Fire Department. He was promoted to Lieutenant in 2023, served as union president for six years, and has been stationed at the East End Station for most of his career. Fire Chief David Toto is recommending him without reservation. He also sits at number one on the Civil Service certification list for this position, meaning the process was competitive and above board. This should sail through.

I don’t know Mr. Barry and this is in no way a reflection on him but the question the Council SHOULD BE asking is “do we really need a deputy chief?” We are looking at massive layoffs across the City but here we are promoting someone. Is this a good time to think about starting a restructuring? Maybe one of them reads this and asks the question….

Mayor’s Report

Usually, the mayor’s report is run down of upcoming events, things going on, and the councilors’ questions (listed below).

Several carry-over requests from the last meeting are back. Some of these are waste of time questions as they are projects that will take months if not years and could be brought up less consistently.

• Echo Lane Sewer Connection (Councilor Valley): Still no timeline for residents waiting on this sewer project. The fact that it is back on the agenda means DPW has not given a clear answer yet.

• Oakland Avenue Bridge State Report (Councilor Santos): The state inspection report on this bridge has been requested twice now. It should exist. Where is it?

• Police/Fire/DPW Building Feasibility Study (Councilor Santos): Also a repeat. These buildings are aging and the city knows it. Santos keeps asking for a status update on the feasibility study. These things move slowly in government, but at some point, “it’s moving” needs to become something more specific.

• New Trash Barrel Delivery (Councilor Drew): When are the barrels arriving and how will they be distributed?

• Second and Third Trash Bin Fees (Councilor Marsan): Are residents actually being billed in years two, three, and four for extra bins? How many extra bins are out there? This is a revenue question the city should be able to answer quickly.

• Lowell and East Capitol Street Construction (Councilor Marsan): Another repeat. When does work resume and when does it end?

• Parks Audit RFP and Buildings Audit RFP (Councilor Drew): Are these formal requests for proposals out the door yet? The city committed to auditing its parks and buildings. This is asking if the paperwork to get that done has actually been filed.

• Pickleball Court Concerns (Councilors Pesce and Drew): No further details are in the agenda, but this has clearly become a point of community tension. Expect some back-and-forth.

• Downtown 2-Hour Parking (Councilor DiZoglio): A request to Chief MacNamara asking whether the 2-hour parking limit downtown should be reconsidered in favor of something more flexible. A good question for downtown businesses.

• Lowell Street Bridge Revitalization (Councilor DiZoglio): DiZoglio wants a broader discussion about the future of the Lowell Street Bridge corridor. No vote, just conversation, but it is a conversation worth having.

• Swan Street and Jackson Street Sign (Councilor DiZoglio): A sign update. Small ask, easy win if someone just handles it.

CAFO Report

The Chief Administrative and Financial Officer’s report will be delivered, with one specific question on the record:

Searles Estate Expenses (requested by Chair Soto): This request has been on the agenda before. Soto wants a full accounting of every dollar associated with the Searles Estate: acquisition, insurance, bond payments, outstanding obligations, all of it. She says it’s because the public deserves a clear answer on this which is absolutely true but it smells more like she’s just trying to shame the mayor. Tonight may be the night it actually gets addressed. We will see.

Unfinished Business

TR-25-75: Cooper Lane Accepted as a Public Way

View resolution

This one has been sitting around for a while; it was filed in 2025. The developer JR Builders, Inc. wants Cooper Lane officially accepted as a public way, meaning the city takes ownership and maintenance responsibility for the road. Councilor Marsan is pulling it off the table for a vote. Once a developer builds a road in a subdivision and the city accepts it, plowing, pothole repairs, and all future upkeep become the city’s problem. The council needs to be satisfied the road was built to proper standards before they vote yes.

Nothing was provided to address the quality of the road or any of the many other things required to get this ready for acceptance.

TR-26-42: Seasonal Restroom Policy for City Athletic Fields

View resolution

Sponsored by Councilors Drew, MacLaren, and Valley. This came out of the public health concern raised last meeting about kids playing baseball with no bathroom access. What it fails to mention is that the complaint came during the tail end of the winter, when pipes freeze at night and that is the reason the bathroom wasn’t open.

The resolution does two things: it sets April 15 through October 31 as the window when city restrooms at fields will be open for permitted groups, and it requires any outside organization using city fields outside that window to provide and pay for their own portable toilets, including at least one ADA-accessible unit. The organizations, not the city, foot that bill.

This is a reasonable but we have a few questions … who checks that the portable units are actually there and up to standard and can we actually force them to do this?

TR-26-43: Moving $42,500 for Grant Writing Services

View resolution

The city budgeted $42,500 to hire a full-time grant writer. After going through an RFP process, they decided to contract it out instead of hiring someone. This vote just moves the money from the salaries bucket to the outside services bucket. No new spending, just accounting housekeeping. The decision to go outside rather than hire in-house is worth watching over time, but for tonight, it is a clean vote. This is a second vote.

TR-26-44: $40,000 for Payroll Processing

View resolution

The city’s payroll software and service costs came in higher than what was budgeted through the end of the fiscal year. This transfers $40,000 from free cash, which currently sits at over $20 million, to cover it.

I believe this is also up for its second vote. All of this is because the munis implementation is not on timeline. Now you should be aware that some of that is the fault of the city for setting an unrealistic timeline, clearly without considering the history of poor staffing levels.

TR-26-46: $75,000 Brownfields Grant for Searles Estate

View resolution

The state’s Massachusetts Development Finance Agency is awarding Methuen $75,000 to test the soil and groundwater at the Searles Estate for contamination. Free money, no city match required. Before the city can do anything meaningful with that property, whether to redevelop, sell, or lease it, it needs a clean environmental bill of health. This is a necessary first step and a smart use of available state funding. This should be an easy one.

TR-26-47: Letter Supporting the State Audit of the Legislature

View resolution

Sponsored by Councilor Pesce. In November’s election, Massachusetts voters approved by a wide margin (72%) giving State Auditor and hometown superhero Diana DiZoglio the authority to audit the state legislature. The legislature, with help from Attorney General Campbell, has been blocking it ever since. This resolution asks Methuen to formally go on record supporting the audit and send a letter to AG Campbell saying so. This is a political statement, not a financial one. I don’t expect any real debate but I’m calling it now some of the Councilors will use this as an opportunity to campaign from the table. How the council votes will say something about where they stand on government accountability versus staying out of state-level politics.

TO-26-13: Nepotism Ordinance Update (as amended)

View ordinance

Chair Soto has been pushing this one and it is back with amendments. The current city nepotism rules, she claims, are outdated as and insufficient. This ordinance rewrites them to be “strictest in the state”.

The definition of “family member” now includes spouses, children, stepchildren, in-laws, siblings, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and first cousins. The rules prohibit hiring family into the same department, bar family members of department heads from working in that department, and require that if two employees in the same department become family members after the ordinance passes, one has to transfer out within 90 days. If they cannot agree on who moves, the lower-seniority employee must go.

Here is where it gets interesting: Police and Fire are explicitly carved out. The ordinance exempts both departments from the same-department hiring rules, the department head family member prohibition, and the 90-day vacate requirement. The reason is legitimate. Police and Fire operate under Massachusetts Civil Service law, which controls hiring and promotion at the state level independently of anything the city passes locally. Methuen cannot override that with a local ordinance, so the carve-out is legally necessary, not optional.

What that means practically is that the nepotism rules with the most bite apply to every city department except the two largest uniformed departments. That is not a knock on this ordinance. It is just the reality of how Civil Service works in Massachusetts, and anyone who tries to tell you the exemption is suspicious does not understand the legal landscape. The state controls those hiring lists, not the Mayor, not the Council, and not HR.

There is an important note on the rest of the ordinance: this is prospective only. Nobody loses their current job because of it. But within 30 days of passage, any existing relationships that would otherwise violate the policy have to be disclosed in writing to the City Clerk.

A few things worth watching when this comes up for debate:

The ordinance defines “family member” more broadly than Massachusetts state law does. State law covers immediate family: parents, children, siblings, spouses, and in-laws. This ordinance goes further, adding first cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces, and nephews to the city’s hiring rules. That is a deliberate local expansion and arguably a good one. But the ordinance then references state law’s financial conflict provisions in the same document without acknowledging the two definitions do not match. That gap does not kill the ordinance, but it is sloppy drafting that could create confusion down the road.

The 90-day vacate requirement for employees who become family members sounds reasonable until you think about what it actually means. If two city employees get married, one of them has 90 days to transfer or leave. The ordinance does not say the city is obligated to make a transfer available. It just says one of them has to go. That is a real employment consequence with real legal exposure and the ordinance is silent on the details.

The 30-day window to file disclosures after passage is also tighter than it sounds. With “family member” now defined this broadly, there are likely more existing relationships across city departments than anyone has formally counted. Thirty days to identify all of them, document them, and get paperwork to the City Clerk is going to be a sprint.

The council should go in with eyes open about what questions the implementation is going to raise almost immediately after passage. They should also be asking what the catalyst is and pushing for clear and specific answers. For anybody who’s been paying attention to the city for more than a minute, this looks to be the piece of a bigger puzzle. If I had to guess, right now on the spot, this is to block promotions and new applicants to help guarantee certain people are able to apply and get jobs. That may not be nepotism… but that’s still dirty politics and that’s what I think this is helping build towards.

New Business

TR-26-45: $850,000 for Trash Tipping Fees (Reconsidered)

View resolution

The trash saga continues. This resolution, $850,000 from free cash to cover trash disposal costs that ACTUALLY aligned with projections, was apparently voted on at a prior meeting. Councilor DiZoglio is requesting it be reconsidered, which means the council will first vote on whether to reopen the question, and if that passes, vote on the resolution itself again.

A little history… This was budgeted almost appropriately last year. I say almost appropriately because the mayor reduced the number before it even went to the council. Yes, that’s a dangerous game to play but given the circumstances, not the worst decision that could have been made. The problem came later when the council reduced it even farther. Now, there is lots of blame to go around here already but some of this is on the Mayor and CAFO for not addressing this earlier in the year. We did a whole story on this. You can go back and read it (or listen to it on substack) later.

Was the new trash and recycling program not supposed to reduce waste and cut these costs?

Yes, and we are producing less tonnage than we did pre-barrel program. This is a budgeting issue. The projections for tonnage were spot on. We all saw this coming because it was heading our way by design. The mayor brought forward A proposal to move the funds that failed. Then we had the special meeting which was tanked by Councilor Marsan.

If any of these votes on money transfers for trash fail, we are likely looking at a stoppage and trash pickup, probably late May.

Personally, I don’t think it passes.

TR-26-49: PACE Massachusetts Clean Energy Program

View resolution | View backup/program overview

This one is worth understanding because it could have real impact on Methuen’s commercial property landscape. PACE stands for Property Assessed Clean Energy. Here is how it works in plain language:

A business owner wants to make energy upgrades: solar panels, new HVAC, better insulation, LED lighting. They do not have to pay out of pocket. Instead, a private lender finances the project, and the business repays the loan through a special line item on their property tax bill over up to 20 years. If the property is sold, the assessment transfers to the new owner.

For the city to allow this, Methuen has to opt in. That is what this vote does. The city collects the payments and passes them through to the state’s program administrator, MassDevelopment. The city takes on no financial risk; private capital funds everything, and Methuen is not on the hook if a business defaults.

Eighty-two Massachusetts municipalities have already signed on, including Lowell, Peabody, North Andover, and Lynn. Methuen is late to this party but catching up. For a city that wants to attract and retain businesses and lower their operating costs so they stick around, this is a no-brainer. It costs the city nothing and gives local businesses a financing tool they currently have to go elsewhere to find.

TO-26-11: Pest Control Ordinance for Demolition and Commercial Waste

View ordinance

Sponsored by Councilor DiZoglio. This ordinance has been in progress for a while. The idea is simple: when a building comes down or a commercial waste operation runs nearby, rats and other vermin get displaced and spread into surrounding neighborhoods. This ordinance puts the responsibility for pest control squarely on whoever is doing the demolition or running the commercial waste operation, not on the neighbors who end up dealing with the aftermath.

The fine for non-compliance is $300 per day, per offense. The Board of Health sets the specific standards. The ordinance also requires that anyone applying for a dumpster permit for demolition or site clearing gets clear written notice about this requirement upfront: no surprises.

This is good, practical, public health legislation. The only real enforcement question is whether the Board of Health has the capacity to follow through when a complaint comes in. Passing the ordinance is step one. Making it real is step two.

Keep an eye out for the meeting recap on Tuesday.

So, I went live. Watch the video and react appropriately.

After four councilors blocked emergency trash funding last week, Mayor Beauregard and the City Council have reached a tentative deal to keep the trucks rolling. But the vote isn't done yet.

Methuen's trash standoff appears to be heading toward a resolution — but residents won't know for certain until Tuesday night. Mayor D.J. Beauregard announced Thursday that the city is moving forward with a plan, developed in partnership with the City Council, to ensure that trash and recycling pickup continues without interruption.

The mayor has called an emergency special meeting of the City Council for Tuesday, April 28, at 7:00 p.m. at which the Council will take a formal vote on the proposal. Until that vote happens, no funds have been transferred and no services are formally secured.

"At its core, this is about putting taxpayer dollars to work to pay a critical bill that provides essential services our residents rely on."

— Mayor D.J. Beauregard

The plan includes a transfer of funds to cover current solid waste disposal costs — the tipping fees at the heart of this week's crisis — along with additional measures aimed at controlling long-term expenses. As part of the deal, the city would implement enhanced enforcement of its solid waste ordinance, including public education and penalties for violations like contamination and improper disposal. The administration says those enforcement efforts are designed to reduce overall waste tonnage and bring down the disposal costs that have put the city in this position.

The plan also includes a new accountability provision: monthly reporting to the City Council on enforcement actions and progress toward cost control goals.

How We Got Here

The crisis traces back to the FY26 budget process, when the City Council trimmed the tipping fee line item — the charges the city pays to dispose of collected waste — over warnings from the Beauregard administration. When those costs came due, the city found itself short.

A funding transfer to cover the gap was brought before the full Council on April 21. A majority of councilors supported it, but four voted against, blocking the supermajority required to pass. Mayor Beauregard warned publicly the next day that trash and recycling service was now at risk, directing residents with service complaints to call the Office of the City Council at 978-983-8510.

Since then, the mayor's office says it worked with Council members to negotiate the path forward announced Thursday.

📅 What's Next

Tuesday, April 28 · 7:00 p.m. — Emergency special meeting of the Methuen City Council. The Council will vote on the funding transfer and the accompanying enforcement and accountability measures.

If approved, funds will be transferred and tipping fee costs will be covered, securing services for the remainder of FY26.

If the vote fails again, service disruption remains a live possibility. Residents should monitor city communications.

The Bigger Picture

This episode is the latest in a pattern of mid-year funding scrambles in Methuen. The tipping fee situation follows the same contour … a line item cut over objection, then a crisis when the bill came due.

The enforcement and monthly reporting requirements built into this deal suggest both sides are trying to address the structural dynamic, not just patch the immediate hole. Whether that accountability mechanism changes how the FY27 budget process plays out will be the real test.

For now, the trucks are still running. Tuesday's vote will determine whether they stay that way.

The Numbers Every Resident Should See

Foundation enrollment: 6,553 students
Required Net School Spending: $124,723,584
Required minimum city contribution: $52,046,906
Chapter 70 state aid: $72,676,678
Non-net spending (busing, etc.): $11,855,430
Mayor’s total proposed number: $113,976,970 (includes non-net)
True educational spend in the mayor’s proposal: $102,121,540
Estimated chargebacks toward NSS: $24,000,000

Overage above NSS floor: $1,397,956, or approximately 1.1 percent

FY26 Net & Non-net $110M (plus some one-time transfers from free cash not counted here)

Municipal budgeting is a mystery to many… even some of those tasked with doing the job. We are going to recap last night’s School Committee budget workshop and the school budget here. This isn’t meant to illicit fear. This is meant to be educational and informative. We need to understand the problem so we can discuss a path forward.

Let’s get into it…

The school has the mayor’s number and it is $113,976,970, verified directly with the Mayor moments before publishing. He says it exceeds Net School Spending. That’s true but it deserves clarification.

To get a real view, you need to strip out the $11,855,430 in non-net spending, which covers things like busing and other costs that do not count toward the state’s educational spending requirement, and the actual educational investment in the mayor’s FY27 proposal is roughly $102 million. The state requires Methuen to spend $124,723,584 in net school spending to meet its legal obligation for 6,553 enrolled students.

Chargebacks are estimated at around $24 million and do count toward NSS. These are things like Insurance, school resource officers, and shared city resources. Factor those in and the district is at approximately $126 million in total credited spending, which puts it barely above the NSS floor by about 1.1 percent. That’s still a win here in Methuen.

None of this was explained clearly at Tuesday night’s school committee budget session.

The Meeting

Superintendent Golobski opened by framing the discussion around what needs to be protected as the district works toward reductions. It was a hopeful framing for what became a long and uneven session.

Mayor Beauregard was direct about the structural problem. Last year’s school budget was $110.6 million. To maintain level services, the district needs $123 million or more. Proposition 2.5 caps the city’s ability to raise revenue at 2.5 percent annually, and costs are growing far faster than that. He defended the city’s free cash position, noting that relying on it is not sustainable year after year, and made clear that without help from the state, the math does not work.

School Committee Member Nick DiZoglio, joining remotely and without his camera on for the entire meeting, acknowledged what others danced around: the city knew this was coming and did not adequately prepare. He floated ideas including a 1/12 budget to avoid immediate cuts, cutting bus routes, charging for transportation, and exploring partnerships with MEVA. The mayor ruled out the 1/12 approach as an active consideration and explained why a fare-free MEVA partnership does not work if the service is restricted to students, since that would put children on buses alongside the general public.

Member Willette returned to familiar territory. Millionaires tax. State rainy day fund. Cannabis revenues. Gambling receipts. These are legitimate advocacy points at the State House. They are not going to close a gap measured in the millions before we need to present a balanced budget.

Member Keegan offered some of the session’s more grounded thinking. She renewed a push for a virtual academy that would generate revenue without disrupting students currently in school, and noted that cutting high school bus routes does not actually save money because the district pays for the bus whether it makes one run or five. We explored this on the last School Committee.

Member Donovan attempted twice to redirect the conversation toward decisions that are actually within the committee’s control.

“If it’s not in our purview, I don’t think we should be talking about it tonight. Right now we are in survival mode.”

Member Sirois brought some of the sharpest clarity of the night. She noted that there are two weeks left to balance a budget with no clear picture of what state and federal funding will look like. And she said what the numbers actually show:

“Once again we are being asked to balance the budget on the backs of our students.”

Way to go, Martha! I said it last year too and its still true. She also focused on her lived experience with budgeting and the impact after many years in the district.

The mayor, perhaps without realizing it, borrowed language that had been used to describe the district’s situation in earlier coverage, saying the city is not cutting from fat but from bone. That framing is accurate, but it obscures how the district got here. When the official budget number includes non-net spending to make the total look closer to the required threshold, and the gap is framed as a level-service problem rather than a structural underfunding problem, the public does not get the full picture. What he means here is that while other places like Lexington, Westford, Boston, and many others are cutting, they have been well above net school spending for years. In a way, this hurts less. Meanwhile, Methuen has routinely treated net school spending as a goal to meet and now when we cut, it hurts and takes core services away. More on this below.

DiZoglio pushed back on what he characterized as performative politics from the city council side, suggesting some members are more focused on their public image than on solving the problem at hand. He urged the committee to stop speechmaking and start making difficult decisions. He then weakened his own argument by floating cuts to early college and CTE programming. CTE is self-funding and revenue-generating. Cutting these hurts us long-term.

The most concrete outcome of the night was a class size framework. The target is to keep grades 2 through 8 under 26 students, with high school still being worked out. That reconfiguration accounts for roughly $1 million in savings so far. The evaluation is still ongoing.

Member Baez surfaced a concept started by Willette via email, presumably shortly before the meeting, focusing on administrative expenses. Dr. Golobski provides data from DESE that deserves more attention than it got. Methuen ranks 388th out of 395 Massachusetts districts in per-pupil administrative spending, at $408 per student. The highest-spending districts reach $3,000 per pupil. The district has zero instructional coaches. Peer districts have 11 or more each. The persistent narrative that Methuen is top-heavy with administrators is not supported by any data. It is the opposite of what the data shows. However, that narrative will continue as the masses are desperate to cling to something negative to avoid the real conversations.

This Is Not What It Looks Like Elsewhere

Most of the school districts generating budget headlines across Massachusetts right now are cutting from systems that grew substantially over the past decade. Methuen is not.

Lexington, long held as the gold standard of Massachusetts public education, is eliminating 65 full-time positions and sending non-renewal notices to 160 early-career educators, this, just months after voters approved a tax hike for a $660 million new high school. Its superintendent acknowledged that “half of Massachusetts school districts are wrestling with the same pressures we are.”

Boston Public Schools is proposing 300 to 400 position cuts from a district whose central office nearly doubled in size over the past decade as pandemic funding poured in.

Brookline faces the possibility of eliminating more than 200 positions if voters reject a $23.25 million tax override in May.

Salem, North Andover, Newton, and Framingham are all cutting staff and programs. Salem’s superintendent called this “the most challenging year I’ve seen” in 12 years of leading Massachusetts schools.

Statewide, Framingham has voted to cut 51 jobs, Chelsea is proposing 70, Middleborough 29, and Grafton 18. The executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees estimates roughly half the state’s districts are operating with painfully tight budgets.

The shared causes are real: the end of federal ESSER pandemic funding, inflation, rising transportation and utility costs, growing special education caseloads, and federal cuts under the current administration. None of these districts are having an easy year.

But the nature of the cuts is different. When Boston trims positions after its central office nearly doubled, that is a recalibration of a system that had resources to spend. When Lexington cuts teachers six months after approving a $660 million school building project, that is a community adjusting its expectations from a position of historic wealth. Methuen has never been in that position. Its $408 per-pupil administrative spend, 388th out of 395 districts, is not a system with room to trim. It’s zero instructional coaches, compared to 11 or more in comparable districts, is not a system that was ever overstaffed. The positions being cut or left unfilled here were never extras. They were never replacements for something better. They were the minimum. But let’s continue to blame our Superintendent because our kids can’t read.

What Happens if the Gap Does Not Close

If the district cannot close the shortfall without cutting further into positions and services, the consequences are concrete. Special Ed will have difficulty meeting IEP service requirements under federal law. Grammar school class sizes will exceed the targets the committee itself set Wednesday night. The STEM initiative tied to active state grant obligations will lack the coordinator required to fulfill those commitments. Students with behavioral dysregulation at the elementary level will not have intervention support. Families who do not speak English will have no reliable bilingual point of contact at the high school.

These are not theoretical outcomes. They are the documented distance between what the district currently has and what it is legally required to provide.

The meeting ended without resolution. There are two weeks left. The state’s Chapter 70 numbers are not finalized and likely will not be before the Council has to vote on a budget. Federal funding remains uncertain and that is unlikely to change. The structural gap between what Methuen needs to educate its students and what the city can legally raise under Proposition 2.5 is not a problem a virtual academy or a bus route review is going to solve.

Other districts across Massachusetts are falling from heights they built up over years of investment. Methuen never built that height. When Methuen falls, it’s from the starting line and it hurts far more than a fall from glory.

Sources and figures

Methuen School Committee meeting, April 22, 2026 |

FY27 Preliminary Budget documents (Central Office, Tenney, Timony, MHS) |

City of Methuen FY27 budget figures |

Massachusetts DESE district profiles |

Boston Globe, March 2026 |

Boston Globe, March 2026 |

Brookline.News |

Boston 25 News |

WBUR |

CBS Boston

A Suffolk County Superior Court judge has officially ended former Methuen Police Captain Gregory Gallant’s legal fight to get his job back, ruling on April 7, 2026, that his 2022 termination was justified.

Justice Cathleen E. Campbell denied Gallant’s motion for judgment on the pleadings and allowed cross-motions filed by both the Massachusetts Civil Service Commission and the City of Methuen … meaning the court sided entirely with the city.

You can read the full text here → https://www.mass.gov/doc/gallant-gregory-v-city-of-methuen-related-superior-court-decision-4726-issued-by-superior-court/download

What Did the Judge Actually Do?

This wasn’t a full trial. Both sides asked the judge to rule based solely on the written record (the documents, decisions, and findings already produced through years of administrative proceedings). That process is called a motion for judgment on the pleadings, and it’s essentially each side saying “the facts are clear enough … just decide.”

Gallant argued the Commission got it wrong and asked the judge to overturn its decision. The Commission and the City filed their own cross-motions asking the judge to uphold it. Justice Campbell sided with the Commission and the City on every argument Gallant raised.

How We Got Here

The case stems from events dating back to 2017, when Gallant led the superior officers’ union bargaining team during negotiations over a new collective bargaining agreement. After a tentative deal was reached, Gallant, tasked with drafting the final contract, inserted more than twenty pay-related language changes that were never agreed upon at the bargaining table. The revisions, which would have dramatically expanded the base pay formula, were so significant that city officials calculated they would have resulted in annual salaries of $200,000 to $500,000 for superior officers… increases of between 77% and 224% over the prior contract.

The altered CBA was signed by then-Mayor Stephen Zanni, who later testified he never read it before signing.

When a new administration took office in 2018 and discovered the financial implications, chaos followed. The Massachusetts Office of the Inspector General opened an investigation, a union grievance went to arbitration, and ultimately both the OIG and an independent arbitrator concluded that Gallant had unilaterally revised the contract without the City’s knowledge or agreement. You may recall the infamous statement Attorney for the Union Gary Nolan sent to Gallant about the last-minute changes he had added to the contract, "You covered all the bases, Greg. Nice work. Hopefully they (city councilors) don't have calculators at the meeting. Good luck."

In February 2022, Gallant received a letter from the U.S. Department of Justice advising him he had become a target of a federal grand jury investigation for possible wire fraud and obstruction of justice. Months later, the City terminated his employment after a disciplinary hearing.

The Civil Service Battle

Gallant appealed his firing to the Civil Service Commission, and a Division of Administrative Law Appeals (DALA) magistrate initially recommended reversing the discharge. But the Commission rejected that recommendation in an October 2024 decision, finding that the City did have just cause citing Gallant’s conduct unbecoming of a police officer and his evasive and contradictory testimony before OIG investigators and the arbitrator.

Gallant then brought the matter to Superior Court, arguing the Commission had overstepped. The court disagreed on every count.

Justice Campbell found the Commission’s decision was supported by substantial evidence, that it properly considered Gallant’s invocation of his Fifth Amendment rights as part of its broader findings, and that a procedural argument over a one-day deadline did not invalidate the Commission’s ruling.

The Bottom Line

After nearly a decade of legal proceedings spanning a union arbitration, a federal investigation, an OIG inquiry, a civil service appeal, and now Superior Court review, Gregory Gallant’s termination from the Methuen Police Department stands.

The City of Methuen has not yet issued a public comment on the ruling.

This one had some moments. A feel-good citation that didn’t quite feel good, a nepotism ordinance that got tabled before anyone could agree on what problem it was solving, and a trash funding vote that failed and with real consequences announced before the night was even over.

I think the award for best councilor tonight goes to Councilor Drew. He had the right questions at the right times. You’ll see more as this goes on.

Here’s everything, in order.

Roll Call / Agenda

All nine councilors present. Pesce moved to pull TO-26-13 (the nepotism ordinance) and place it after item 9. Valley seconded. Passes unanimously.

Pledge / Invocation / Moment of Silence

Still doing this. Still making it religious. Still wondering why.

Public Participation

Bonita LaTorre (sorry if I spelled that wrong) came to speak on the VSO vacancy. She spent 20 years in the army and asked the council to keep the values of military service in mind when filling the role.

A letter was also read into the record from a firefighter opposing the potential switch from BCBS to GIC. He raised concerns about disrupted care for employees managing ongoing health issues and pointed out that fewer than 60 municipalities in the state participate in GIC. Worth keeping in the back of your mind as that item eventually comes back off the table.

Minutes

April 6th regular meeting minutes accepted.

Proclamations / Correspondence

A citation was presented to Michele Desrochers of Creative Hair for 23 years of service providing hair and beauty services to residents of Methuen. Sponsored by DiZoglio.

A few things worth noting here. It wasn’t on the agenda as proclamations usually are which would include the sponosor. We learned tonight it was sponosored by DiZoglio. DiZoglio mentioned he only met her two weeks ago which is when he decided she was deserving. No judgment on that, but it stood out. Marsan did make the point that the recognition was about more than just the salon, which was a nice moment. That moment was quickly ruined as Soto rushed through the presentation in what felt like a hurry to get to photos, not really giving Michele much of a chance to speak beyond a quick thank you.

TO-26-13 — Ordinance Amending Section 4-1(J): Nepotism

Moved by MacLaren, seconded by Valley.

This one meandered for a while before landing exactly where you’d expect it to.

Pesce raised a legitimate concern right out of the gate: what about people who genuinely chose the same career path as a family member? Should a firefighter’s kid be blocked from becoming a firefighter in their hometown? The HR Director acknowledged some revision might be needed, particularly around separating divisions within departments, and noted that having family members supervise family would likely run up against the state ethics law regardless.

Pesce followed up with a fair question: do we even know how many family members currently work for the city? The HR Director’s answer was it’s “hard to quantify… maybe 10” which was not exactly reassuring as a baseline for writing new policy. She estimated only one instance of a family member currently supervising family that she knows of.

This is Drew’s first big win of a question tonight, “what’s actually driving this?” Soto explained it came out of a conversation with HR and the assistant solicitor, rooted in a complaint that summer jobs were being given preferentially to city employees’ families. She called the proposed ordinance the most stringent in the state as written, which seemed to be a point of pride rather than a red flag.

Drew called it “overkill” (another point for Drew in my new game of best councilor award) and said what’s already on the books seemed sufficient. Soto got a bit testy, asking whether Drew thought family members should be able to vote for each other… a framing that didn’t quite map onto the actual discussion.

DiZoglio offered the most memorable hypothetical of the night: what if two city employees’ parents married each other, making the employees step-siblings in their late 30s? Under the ordinance as written, one of them would need to leave within 90 days. Soto held the line that someone would have to go. The HR Director suggested they could simply move to a different division. DiZoglio looked visibly disturbed by this.

Marsan liked the idea of keeping family members out of supervisory roles over each other which totally missed the point of why Soto said this was coming up. Simard supported the concept but wanted to table it to avoid unintentionally shaming employees who followed a family member into public service. The Mayor noted for the record that the city has hired every kid who applied for summer jobs in recent years because the applicant pool is just that thin.

Pesce moved to table. DiZoglio seconded. Passes unanimously.

[My take]: There’s a real policy question buried in here, but the ordinance as written wasn’t ready. Pesce and Drew were right to pump the brakes. “Most stringent in the state” is not a goal. Fixing a real problem is.

Mayor’s Report

Before the Mayor could start, Soto made an extended statement about how the council should not be viewed through the lens of favorable versus unfavorable votes. She talked about checks and balances, said votes aren’t personal, and expressed concern about the body being ridiculed. As chair, she said she wants to protect the integrity of the council and move forward with mutual respect without creating division.

The Mayor thanked her and said he hoped “those sentiments are echoed back my way by members of the council.” Make of that what you will…

On to actual news:

MEVA recently launched Route 25, a new cross-town bus connecting the Loop and Haverhill Street Plaza.

Leaf and yard waste pickup started April 6th and runs through November, collected on your regular recycling day.

Autism Awareness flag was raised at City Hall on April 6th.

Acting VSO Tim Sheehy was acknowledged for keeping operations running. The permanent search is posted, and Simard will lead the search committee.

Grant writing services are on the agenda tonight, with a target of $3–4 million in new grants.

2026 paving season: bids are in for full reclamation work, ready for DPW on May 4th. Milling is still out to bid and the stagger is intentional.

FY2027 budget: the Mayor acknowledged the “crunch” being felt across the commonwealth, said the city is looking for new revenue, and said the quiet part out loud … an override would likely not pass in Methuen.

CAFO Report

Pesce had requested projections on the cost of the Mayor’s paid parental leave executive order. The CAFO sent the data right before the meeting, so everyone was seeing it fresh.

The headline number was $2.5 million represents what it would cost if EVERY EMPLOYEE took all four weeks. That scenario would never happen so presenting it is a bit silly. CAFO went on to explain that based on 2023 data, 13 employees used leave, and if all of them had taken the full four weeks, the actual cash value would have been around $65,000.

Pesce said she supports the benefit but raised a process concern: this should have gone through collective bargaining, where it could serve as a real tool at the table. Worth watching how this develops with the unions.

Requests of Councilors

Echo Lane Sewer Connection (Valley): Nothing new as the mayor is bogged down with budget prep.

Police/Fire/DPW Building Replacement (Santos): A vendor contract is expected at the next meeting.

Oakland Avenue Bridge (Santos): The Mayor wasn’t aware of a specific state report, but the bridge is on the state replacement list. No timetable exists. Looking at roughly $60k for near-term repairs. Representatives Payano and Reyes are working to help secure funding.

New Trash Barrel Distribution (Drew): New orders are being fulfilled without issue. Fee collection runs through spring, then Harvey takes over management. Drew asked why a new position was created if it’s being handed off and the Mayor clarified the new hire will manage the vendor and enforce sanitation issues out in the field.

Lowell and East Capitol Street Construction (Marsan): Work has started. Six weeks expected.

Youth Baseball Field Restrooms (Soto): Ties back to concerns in March about freezing temperatures and pipe damage. Soto acknowledged they can push it down the road as its on the agenda tonight.

Holy Family Hospital Maternity Services (Valley): The Mayor spoke with the CEO of Merrimack Health. The facility is restructuring into med-surg, with maternity focused in Lawrence going forward. The Mayor acknowledged the city’s ability to intervene is basically nonexistent. Valley said she’s received calls indicating about 85 jobs are affected, with some belonging to Methuen residents.

Parks Audit RFP (Drew): Mayor acknowledged the timeline was ambitious. It’s top of mind.

Buildings Audit RFP (Drew): A recent meeting with Trane out of Wilmington about an energy audit went well. Could provide a state-compliant path for facility upgrades.

Permanent VSO Posting (Drew and Simard): Simard read a letter from former VSO Paul Jensen expressing frustration over the ongoing vacancy. Appreciated that the posting is up as of today. Simard also made clear the Chair does not speak for him in her statement made at the beginning of the Mayor’s report and the Mayor can keep posting on Facebook the same way the Chair does.

Pesce flagged the pickleball situation as an issue for the next meeting which stems a complaint from a year ago has resurfaced and now involves police. More to come.

There was supposed to be a discussion over removing the 2-hour downtown parking limit with Chief McNamara but that never happened.

Contracts

C-26-82: Marsh Boiler Replacement, $796,689

Rise Group, Cranston RI. Includes a five-year extended warranty. Valley asked who handles the disposal of the current boiler and the Mayor believes that’s on the vendor. Moved by Pesce, seconded by Santos. The Mayor confirmed this is a critical project. Passes unanimously.

C-26-83: Two Zero-Turn Mowers for DPW, $48,888.60

MB Tractor & Equipment, Plaistow NH. On state contract, funded through CIP. Santos asked about the fate of the current equipment and the CAFO explained surplus equipment comes to council once a year for auction. Moved by Valley, seconded by Santos. Passes unanimously.

C-26-84: Old Ferry Road Culvert Engineering, $144,000

Woodard and Curran, Andover MA. DiZoglio wanted to know if an engineering report already exists; the Mayor clarified this contract is what produces that report. Ties to Congresswoman Trahan funding and prior work by Perry. Some back-and-forth about whether the road is accepted by the state and ultimately the DPW director will work to resolve that with documentation. Moved by Valley, seconded by Santos. Passes unanimously.

C-26-85: Community Development Office Renovation, $73,454.63

W.B. Mason, Woburn MA. Moved by DiZoglio, seconded by Simard. This one didn’t survive. Drew had the line of the night: “not proper to spend $75k to move desks.” That was the moment I decided he gets the gold medal of the night. The CAFO noted these weren’t budgeted operating funds. There was an discussion about whether the CIP funds could be repurposed, with the solicitor acknowledging rules exist on that but not spelling them out although eventually the CAFO did. Drew clearly caught on and you can tell he had thoughts how this money could be better spent although he voted in support. Fails 5-4. DiZoglio, Pesce, Santos, Valley, and Soto voted no.

[My take]: Drew called it. Spending $73k on an office makeover while pulling from free cash to cover tipping fees is a hard sell just wish he stuck with it and voted no. Bad vote… good outcome.

C-26-86: Employment Contract, Assistant Fire Chief Daniel Donahue

Moved by Pesce, seconded by Santos. No discussion. Passes unanimously.

Committee Reports

DiZoglio reported from the Public Safety Committee: the bird sanctuary had conservation staff exploring a path; a new dirt bike ordinance is in the works; utilities and handicap parking items are queued up; and National Grid was approached about downtown lighting. More to come on all of it.

Unfinished Business / Resolutions

TR-26-32: Health Insurance Exploration (MGL Ch. 32B §§21–23)

Still tabled. A motion to remove from the table failed when no one seconded it.

TR-26-35: $1,700 from Castle Fund for American Legion Memorial Day Parade

Moved by Drew, seconded by DiZoglio. Passes unanimously.

TR-26-36: Motorcycle Safety Awareness Month Proclamation

Moved by Drew, seconded by Valley. Passes unanimously.

TR-26-37: Currier School Transfer to City Government

Moved by Drew, seconded by Santos. DiZoglio confirmed that any future disposition still comes back to the council. Valley noted about $40k annually in maintenance costs while both buildings are winterized and the Mayor confirmed that Currier is unused; Pleasant Valley holds storage and city archives. The goal is to clear Pleasant Valley and get it listed. Passes unanimously.

TR-26-38: Pleasant Valley School Transfer to City Government

Moved by Drew, seconded by Pesce. Historical materials will need to be relocated before the building can go to market. Passes unanimously.

TR-26-39: FY26 Green Communities Grant from DOER

Moved by Drew, seconded by Santos. Passes unanimously.

TR-26-40: Accepting MGL Ch. 200A §9A (Unclaimed Property)

Moved by Drew, seconded by DiZoglio. Passes unanimously.

New Business / Resolutions

TR-26-41: Naming the Burnham Road Field for Mary McDonough

Moved by Drew, seconded by DiZoglio. Pesce noted this requires a public hearing per process. Tabled for public hearing.

TR-26-42: Seasonal Restroom Policy for Athletic Fields

Moved by DiZoglio, seconded by MacLaren. Drew explained this came out of the parks subcommittee to give the parks department a clear framework particularly around frozen pipes and the cost of porta-potties. Parks Director Angelo said he’d work with the leagues on expectations going forward. Soto asked whether pushing the season start back would solve it but Angelo explained shifting the calendar disrupts everything downstream and the focus is on giving kids a great experience. Passes unanimously.

TR-26-43: $42,500 Transfer for Grant Writing Services

Moved by Drew, seconded by DiZoglio. A transfer between budget lines to fund outsourced grant writing, with a $3–4 million fundraising goal. Drew asked why outsource versus a full-time hire and the Mayor said they budgeted, posted, and never got a qualified applicant. Passes unanimously.

TR-26-44: $40,000 from Free Cash for Payroll Processing

Moved by Drew, seconded by Valley. Needed because the Munis implementation is still incomplete … the city will be ready July 1st but the school department won’t, so the current payroll vendor has to stay on longer than planned.

Marsan asked why we’re here again and the CAFO explained the old council cut this funding and now it needs to come back. Drew called out the hypocrisy directly because this was founded until the last Council cut the funds and now we are putting it back. DiZoglio asked for a full Munis cost history; the CAFO said it runs about $200k annually and the legacy system is so manual that data has to be entered by hand just to migrate it. A Tyler Technologies rep is on-site a few days a week to help out but its costly and slow.

Soto took a jab at the CAFO, suggesting this reflected on how she’s perceived. The Mayor stepped in to defend her, noting her role goes well beyond Munis. Passes 6-3, with Drew, Marsan, and Santos voting no.

TR-26-45: $850,000 from Free Cash for Tipping Fees

Moved by Drew, seconded by Santos.

The background: tipping fees are what the city pays per ton to dispose of trash. The prior council cut this budget line last year. Costs have since risen in part because residents are putting trash in recycling bins and barrels are overflowing… plus the economy overall. The Mayor said the new sanitation coordinator will be out enforcing that.

Marsan pushed back, noting the Mayor recently touted $200k in savings. The Mayor clarified those were FY27 projected savings while this is current-year shortfall. DiZoglio expressed broader frustration that the city is constantly in reactive mode, plugging holes from prior underfunding. Drew asked for a full trash cost history and projections before the next meeting.

Soto asked what happens if the vote fails. The CAFO said the city would need to decide how to cover it and that possible answers would either be to cut something else or maybe skip some weeks of pickup. Soto asked, apparently in earnest, whether any communities do biweekly trash or if the city could “burn our trash.” The Mayor said other towns have experimented and nothing’s working; many are running out of disposal capacity entirely.

DiZoglio, Marsan, Santos, Valley, and Pesce voted no. Fails 5-4. (Needed six votes.)

[My take]: This needed six votes and didn’t get them. And before the night was over, the Mayor told the room that a disruption to trash pickup is now very likely as a direct result. Whether you agree with the no votes or not, that’s the consequence, and residents will feel it. The city’s trash situation is a slow-moving crisis, and kicking this vote doesn’t make the problem go away.

TR-26-46: Brownfields Redevelopment Fund Grant, $75,000

Moved by Valley, seconded by Santos. Passes unanimously.

TR-26-47: Letter of Support for Auditor’s Audit of the Legislature

Moved by Drew, seconded by MacLaren. Pesce brought this forward to support the Auditor in her effort to audit the legislature, as approved by voters on Question 1. Simard said he’d love to see hypocrisy voted out of office. Soto made a veiled statement about transparency that seemed to be aimed at someone in the room but it was unclear who took that shot. Passes unanimously.

New Business / Ordinances

TO-26-12: Rezoning Arcadia Street Parcel for Commercial Use

Applicant: K&K Realty Trust, represented by Johnson & Borenstein. Moved by Simard, seconded by Drew. Tabled for joint public hearing with Community Development.

Any Other Business

The Mayor closed with two significant announcements.

First: because the tipping fee transfer failed, he’ll be meeting with the DPW Director in the morning. His words: “Since we aren’t going to be paying the vendor for trash, there is very likely going to be a disruption to trash pickup service.” That’s not a hypothetical. That’s a heads-up.

Second: a meeting is scheduled for Thursday to discuss an early retirement program as part of the city’s effort to reduce costs heading into a difficult budget year.

That’s a wrap on April 21st. The full agenda is available at the City of Methuen website and meetings are archived at MethuenTV.

Have a tip, a correction, or something you want covered? Reach out.

Watch live at methuen.gov/livestream | Channel 8 (Comcast) or Channel 32 (Verizon) or on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@MethuenMeetings

Full agenda link: https://www.methuen.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Agenda/_04212026-1069?html=true

Agenda items and reports are linked for your convenience.

Procedural Opening

The meeting kicks off with a roll call, the Pledge of Allegiance, the Invocation, and a moment of silence. The part to watch for here is if they decide to work their god back into it or if they stay religiously neutral as they did at the last meeting.

Then comes public participation. Given some of the topics on the agenda (Health Insurance for employees and the transfer of buildings, one of which holds mountains of historical artifacts), I think we should expect a few participants here from the City unions.

The council will also approve the minutes from the April 6th meeting, confirming that the written record of that meeting is accurate.

Proclamations/Correspondence.

Michele Desrochers of Creative Hair will receive a citation. These citations have been a bit of a point of contention lately between Pesce and Santos. Pesce believes they should be giving out sparingly to honor those who have gone above and beyond for the community, while Santos seems to be determined to give them to her friends. Keep in mind, this is a formal honor from the city recognizing her contributions to the community. Ironically, it does not say on this agenda who is sponsoring this citation, as it has in the past. I can’t help but wonder if this is because we called out the previous clear ethical ambiguities of the last few.

Mayor’s Report

This is where the Mayor will rifle off some updates. Always a good time and typically tied directly to the requests of councilors noted below.

CAFO Report (City’s Financial Officer Update)

The CAFO report (Chief Administrative and Financial Officer), prepared by Maggie Duprey, provides a financial overview of the agenda items. Two specific questions are also being asked:

• Paid Parental Leave costs: Councilor Pesce is asking for a breakdown of how much the Mayor’s Executive Order on paid parental leave will cost now and in the future. As a first-world country, a City desiring to attract qualified staff, and a City with predominantly female city leadership. The goal here leaves me scratching my head. We shall see….

• Stadium Improvement Project accounting: Chair Soto wants a clear explanation of an email sent on February 18th regarding money tied to the Stadium project.

Councilors Asking Questions

Several councilors are asking city departments for updates on things residents care about:

• Echo Lane Sewer Connection: Residents on Echo Lane want to know when their sewer connection project will start. Councilor Valley is asking the Mayor and DPW for a timeline.

• Police, Fire and DPW Buildings: Councilor Santos wants to know where things stand on plans to rebuild or replace the aging Police, Fire, and DPW facilities. She has asked about this at every meeting. It may be prudent of the Mayor, CAFO, Solicitor, or even the Chair to explain how government works and how slow things like this move even under the best of circumstances.

• Oakland Avenue Bridge Report: Councilor Santos is requesting the state’s report on the condition of the Oakland Avenue Bridge.

• New Trash Barrels: Councilor Drew wants an update on when the new trash barrels will be delivered and handed out to residents.

• Lowell and East Capitol Street Construction: Councilor Marsan wants to know when construction on that stretch will resume and when it’s expected to finish.

• Second and Third Trash Bin Fees: Councilor Marsan is asking how many residents have extra bins and whether the city is actually collecting the fees for them in years 2, 3, and 4.

• Restrooms at Youth Baseball Fields: Chair Soto is raising a public health concern: kids playing baseball don’t have access to restrooms, and water service is delayed. The council wants an official response from the administration.

• Holy Family Hospital Maternity Ward Closure: Councilor Valley wants the Mayor to address the proposed closure of maternity and neonatal services at the former Holy Family Hospital and what the city plans to do about it. I’m curious what she thinks the Mayor can do about a private non-profit hospital.

• Parks and Buildings Audit RFPs: Councilor Drew is checking on the status of formal requests for proposals to audit the city’s parks and buildings.

• Veterans Service Officer (VSO) Position: Councilors Drew and Simard want to know if the city has posted the permanent VSO job opening yet.

• Downtown 2-Hour Parking: A request to Police Chief McNamara to look into eliminating the 2-hour parking limit downtown and replacing it with something more flexible.

• Lowell Street Bridge Revitalization: Councilor DiZoglio wants to start a conversation about bringing new life to the Lowell Street Bridge area.

Contracts Up for Approval

The council will vote on five contracts. Here’s what each one is for:

C-26-82: Boiler Replacement ($796,689)

View contract -- The city needs to replace the aging Marsh boiler. This contract with the Rise Group covers equipment, labor, materials, and a 5-year warranty for a new high-efficiency condensing boiler. The cost is split between this year’s and last year’s capital improvement budgets. This project previously had problems and is LONG overdue as the Marsh has been running on one ancient boiler for a long time.

C-26-83: Two New Lawn Mowers ($48,888.60)

View contract -- The DPW’s Environmental Division is getting two new zero-turn mowers with baggers to maintain city green spaces. Fully funded in this year’s budget.

C-26-84: Old Ferry Road Culvert Engineering ($144,000)

View contract -- The city is hiring Woodard and Curran to design the replacement of a culvert (a pipe or channel that carries water under a road) on Old Ferry Road. This is an engineering and planning contract… the actual construction comes later. This project is to be funded through the FY24 CIP, which currently has $1,331,600 available. This has been a major pain point for the businesses up on the hill.

C-26-85: Community Development Office Renovation ($73,454.63)

View contract -- Ten new workstations, partitions, and filing cabinets for the Community Development office, designed to match the look of other city offices. This project is to be funded through the FY24 CIP, which currently has $100,000 available.

C-26-86: Assistant Fire Chief Contract (Daniel Donahue)

View contract -- A new employment contract for Assistant Fire Chief Daniel Donahue. His base salary will be approximately $238,889 in FY26, rising to roughly $246,056 in FY27 and FY28. He also receives up to two weeks of annual vacation buyback and six weeks of vacation per year. The cost for the remainder of this fiscal year is already covered in the existing budget.

Resolutions Being Voted On

Resolutions are formal positions or actions taken by the council. Here’s what’s on the table:

Returning Items (Previously Discussed)

TR-26-32: Exploring Health Insurance Options

View resolution -- This allows the city to look into alternative health insurance plans for employees. No immediate changes is coming from this as it just opens the door to potentially saving money down the road. However, there are mixed opinions if the City would need to bargain the change in insurance with the unions.

TR-26-35: $1,700 for Memorial Day Parade Band

View resolution -- A small grant from the Castle Fund (a trust the city manages) to help the American Legion Post 122 pay for a band at the Memorial Day Parade. The Castle Fund currently has over $435,000 in it.

TR-26-36: Motorcycle Safety Awareness Month

View resolution -- A proclamation officially recognizing motorcycle safety awareness in Methuen -- a symbolic gesture to promote road safety as riding season kicks off.

TR-26-37: Transferring Currier School to City Government

View resolution -- The School Department no longer needs the Currier School building. This vote would hand control of it over to the city government as opposed to the School department. The city will take on maintenance costs. Last year, those ran about $16,111 but let’s not forget this is not a new cost as its all ONE BUDGET.

TR-26-38: Transferring Pleasant Valley School to City Government

View resolution -- Same situation as above, but for the Pleasant Valley School which is a teardown. There is no saving this building. But it is worth noting that it is currently the storage facility for many of the artifacts the City and the Gate House Museum hold and there is no current plan on where to move these items.. Last year’s maintenance costs for that building were about $29,886.

TR-26-39: Accepting a $250,000 Green Energy Grant

View resolution -- The state’s Department of Energy Resources awarded Methuen $250,000 for energy efficiency projects across city buildings. The required 25% match is covered through utility rebate incentives, so no extra cost to the city.

TR-26-40: Handling Unclaimed Property

View resolution -- This allows the city to legally close out old funds sitting unclaimed for years, like contractor deposits and developer bonds. The city is currently holding about $700,000 in these kinds of dormant funds. The money would eventually become city property after the required waiting periods and public notices. Much like the findmassmoney run by the state.

New Items

TR-26-41: Naming Burnham Road Field After Mary McDonough

View resolution -- A resolution to officially name the athletic field on Burnham Road in honor of Mary McDonough. Backed by Councilor Pesce and State Rep. Ryan Hamilton. The only cost is a small sign or plaque (under $500).

TR-26-42: Restroom Policy at City Athletic Fields

View resolution -- The council is asking the city to create a formal policy ensuring that organizations using city-owned fields have restroom access during the spring and summer seasons. This ties into the public health concerns raised earlier about youth baseball fields.

TR-26-43: Moving $42,500 for Grant Writing Services

View resolution -- The city originally budgeted this money to hire a full-time grant writer. They’ve decided to hire an outside contractor instead. This vote just moves the money to the right budget line -- no new spending.

TR-26-44: $40,000 for Payroll Processing

View resolution -- The city needs an extra $40,000 to cover payroll software and service costs through the end of the fiscal year. Money would come from free cash (the city’s savings account), which currently has over $20 million. Also worth noting that this implementation has been pretty poorly handled since inception (long before the current mayor) and this has been routinely made clear by repeated questioning from the Council.

TR-26-45: $850,000 for Trash Disposal Costs

View resolution -- Methuen’s trash tonnage came in higher than expected this year, meaning higher tipping fees (what you pay to dump trash at a facility). The city needs $850,000 to cover the overage through June. Money comes from free cash. This makes you stop and think that wasn’t the new trash system supposed to stop this?

TR-26-46: Accepting $75,000 for Environmental Testing at Searles Estate

View resolution -- The state awarded Methuen a $75,000 grant to test the soil and groundwater at the Searles Estate property for contamination. No matching funds required.

TR-26-47: Supporting the State Audit of the Legislature

View resolution -- Councilor Pesce wants Methuen to officially send a letter supporting the Audit of the Legislature to Attorney General Campbell. In the last election, the people voted heavily (72%) in favor of State Auditor DiZoglio auditing the legislature. The legislature, with the help of AG Campbell, has continued to block this.

Ordinances (Law Changes)

TO-26-12: Rezoning Land on Arcadia Street for Commercial Use

View ordinance -- A developer (K & K Realty Trust) wants to rezone a piece of land on Arcadia Street from residential to a neighborhood business district. This item will be tabled for a joint public hearing with the Community Development board -- no vote tonight, but it’s coming.

TO-26-13: Updating the Nepotism Policy

View ordinance -- Chair Soto is proposing a change to the city’s anti-nepotism rules (the law that prevents city officials from hiring family members). No financial impact, but an important good-governance measure. It will be interesting to see how this ties back to the last meeting’s debacle related to the City Assessor.

After the meeting we will do a recap.

Still have questions? Ask them, let’s discuss the issues!

Link:

The Mayor walked into the Methuen Senior Activity Center tonight and made one thing clear right off the bat: he wasn’t there to tell people what they wanted to hear.

“I’m not going to give you a speech full of platitudes and political BS,” he told the crowd. “This is going to be a straightforward look at where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re headed as a city.”

And that’s pretty much what he delivered.

He went straight into the economic condition and didn’t sugarcoat the financial reality heading into this budget season. He recapped the bleak conditions he inherited upon entering office with the schools highlighting that we are now investing more than ever in our schools.

This is where he sets the stage for the looming budget season that is undoubtedly going to be horrendous.

He pointed to Lexington and Brookline, two of the most well-off communities in the state, both staring down multimillion-dollar deficits driven by out-of-control healthcare costs. The Massachusetts Municipal Association, he said, calls it “a perfect storm.” Methuen isn’t immune, but Beauregard argued the work done over the past year puts the city in a better position than most. The point he failed to make here is that these communities, even with the deep cuts to their budgets, are cutting from fat since they have systematically invested well above net school spending (state-required minimum education funding), while Methuen has historically treated it as a game of Limbo.

Next, he got into our electric bills. “If you’ve talked to anyone in Methuen lately, you know electric bills are the number one frustration”. Beauregard reminded the room that back in December 2024, the city launched its Community Choice Power Supply Program, locking in a supply rate about 20 percent below National Grid’s for three years. In 2025, the first full year of the program, participating households saved nearly $1.9 million compared to what they would have paid under National Grid’s basic service rate. “That’s real money back in people’s pockets,” he said. He’s also calling on the state to explore similar programs for natural gas. … I wouldn’t hold my breath on Beacon Hill making that move any time soon.

He recounted that when SNAP disruptions hit families late last year, the city organized a citywide food drive. Neighbors helped neighbors. Local businesses showed up. Volunteers filled boxes. “Whenever the federal government sits down, we stand up,” Beauregard said. “In Methuen, we take care of our own.”

“Citizens should expect more from their government at all levels,” fed into the improvements in transparency and he brought specifics. The city launched a real-time financial dashboard where anyone can track spending down to a “box of paper clips at Staples”. They posted the full public payroll online, something most cities won’t touch. “In Methuen, we welcome audits, and we don’t file lawsuits to stop them.” You need to love these shots at the Delegation and their bodies as a whole for hiding from the audit. He continued to outline how Methuen is investing in its employees. For starters, he recently signed an executive order creating the city’s first-ever paid parental leave program for municipal employees

“In my view, this reform-centered mindset, asking tough questions and pushing for better outcomes, has produced real results” said the Mayor in an opening to explain how the city has secured $800,000 in savings and new funding so far this year, including $200,000 from a revamped trash and recycling program and $600,000 in traffic mitigation funding from a developer, about three times what was originally on the table. He also includes a callout for the work done by the Islamic Academy and how he was able to proctor that sale to benefit both parties.

One of the sharpest moments of the night came when he addressed hiring. He laid out the choice without dressing it up: professionalize city government by hiring qualified, credentialed, politically disconnected people based on merit, or slide back into the patronage habits of what he called “Old Methuen.” “This shouldn’t be a difficult choice,” he said. “I’ve made mine.” This is all stemming from the recent rejection by the Council of a qualified and licensed candidate. Beauregard’s statements are a shot through the heart of the “old Methuen” ways. For those paying attention his comments that this shouldn’t be a difficult choice were clearly aimed at the Council members who voted down his candidate for assessor without any discussion and were (in my opinion) clearly made to challenge the Council to be more progressive and transparent to move this City forward.

The Searles Estate came up as was expected. Beauregard was honest about the scale of the problem: restoration costs are enormous, with a “sprinkler system alone running around $3 million. Private capital isn’t optional, it’s required”. “This can’t be done without private capital investment, which is why we went straight to RFP,” he said. He also had sharp words for elected officials who voted in favor of the original acquisition under Mayor Perry and are now raising questions about due diligence. “It is totally inconsistent to support a project at the time of the vote and later claim it lacked the very due diligence you were responsible for evaluating. You can’t have it both ways.” The plan going forward is to bring in an outside firm to build a comprehensive master plan and take the politics out of it entirely.

Focused on community inclusivity, mention of the celebration of Dominican Independence Day, the first St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Methuen, and our tricentennial, our summer music series. He commits to always supporting Methuen residents in deriving a sense of place and belonging.

The focus shifted to the future. First and foremost, the upcoming budget is bleak and he acknowledges that hard decisions are coming. On the policy front, he laid out an agenda that covers housing, with new development districts and plans to convert the Pleasant Valley and Currier Schools into housing for seniors, veterans, and families; infrastructure, with the Oakland Avenue Bridge repair, dangerous intersection redesigns, and an AI-assisted paving program; and education, with a push to expand early college opportunities so Methuen kids can earn an associate’s degree tuition-free alongside their high school diploma. The city is also partnering with the Merrimack Valley Planning Commission to update a zoning ordinance, Beauregard said is stuck in 1996.

He closed the way every mayor closes a State of the City, by saying the state of the city is strong. But he pushed back on the empty version of that line. “It only means something if you’re honest about why.” The strength, he said, comes from the people. The families, the kids, the seniors, the veterans, the small business owners who show up every day. But he also warned that the city is not at its strongest when divided, or when decisions get made for political cronies instead of residents. “People see it. And they’re tired of it.”

This State of the City was different. Mayor Beauregard didn’t come to the podium to read a list of accomplishments and thank everyone for showing up. He came with something to say… and he said it.

In a political climate where a faction of the City Council has made obstruction their platform, the Mayor chose not to ignore it. He addressed it directly, professionally, and without flinching. He didn’t name-call. He didn’t lose his composure. But he made it unmistakably clear that he sees what’s happening, and he’s not going to pretend otherwise for the sake of keeping the peace.

That takes a certain kind of political courage. Methuen deserves leaders who are willing to say the quiet part out loud … and tonight, that is exactly what the Mayor gave us.

The 2026 State of the City Address was held at the Methuen Senior Activity Center and streamed live on Methuen.gov/LiveStream and MCS (Comcast 22 / Verizon 33).