Dedham launches project to address fiscal sustainability

A new project in Dedham seeks to address fiscal constraints and create greater long-term financial stability for the town, while helping residents voice their fiscal priorities and navigate budget tradeoffs.

In August, Dedham launched the Deficit Reduction Plan Project to address the structural deficit in its annual operational budgets, a problem that’s expected to worsen in the coming years. The town has created a website updating residents on the process. The project centers on three components: a deficit-reduction strategy report, a community survey on spending priorities, and public forums.

Through analysis of Dedham’s fiscal situation and operations, and data collected from residents, the project is expected to help guide future budgeting and programming decisions.

“We can basically crowdsource a solution to this problem that we’re presenting,” said Town Manager Leon Goodwin III. “And hopefully by doing that, we’ll get better community buy-in to whatever solutions we come up with, and also just build in some transparency and trust.”

Dedham joins other Massachusetts communities in seeking new ways to communicate to the public about municipal financial crunches and the need for more aggressive fiscal measures. On Oct. 9, the MMA released a study, “A Perfect Storm: Cities and Towns Face Historic Fiscal Pressures,” detailing the dilemmas that communities face with rising costs, revenue-raising constraints, and the diminishing impact of state aid.

For the past seven or eight years, Dedham has watched its revenues struggle to keep pace with expenses, Goodwin said. The town, with a fiscal 2026 operating budget of $147 million, has already been making tough decisions in recent budget cycles, including eliminating positions, scaling back on school music programs, trimming curbside leaf collection, reducing overtime, and moving some expenses to revolving funds and grant funding.

Meanwhile, the town faces rising costs for personnel, employee health insurance, debt service obligations, and construction, equipment and other purchases, officials said.

Working with the Collins Center for Public Management at UMass Boston, Dedham obtained a $45,000 state Community Compact grant to take a more holistic look at its revenues and expenditures.

“Dedham has never had a Proposition 2½ override, an operating override, so that can’t just be the first thing we jump to, even though that is one of the obvious options,” Goodwin said. “So what are the other options? You can raise revenues. You can cut costs. So this was a way of putting that all together in one place.”

Over the past few months, a working group consisting of elected and appointed officials reviewed and provided feedback and context for the Collins Center’s draft report. On Oct. 30, the town released the 38-page Dedham Deficit Reduction Strategy Report, which outlines strategies for achieving greater financial stability.

The report offers a mix of deficit-reduction options, a small sample of which includes:
• Revenue enhancements, such as using excess taxing capacity and implementing a refuse and disposal fee
• Expenditure reductions, such as delaying investment in the town’s Other Post-Employment Benefit obligations and closing a library branch
• Long-term actions, including exploring regionalization opportunities, identifying and reducing redundancies in services, and adjusting health insurance contribution rates
• Adjustments to the budget process, to enhance collaboration and consensus-building among the town’s policy-setting boards

Dedham conducted a survey through early October to gather residents’ opinions on municipal services, quality-of-life issues, municipal spending priorities, and tolerance for higher taxes, among other questions. After the report is discussed publicly this month, and the survey results are presented to the Select Board on Nov. 20, the town plans to hold several public forums soon to connect with residents directly on these issues.

Finance Director Brady Winsten said she is excited to see insights from both the report and the survey.

“We’ll have a menu of options, and we’ll have a statistically valid report with residents basically ranking what services they prefer to spend money on,” she said. “If we do have to make cuts, we’re going to make them be the services that residents care about the least. So at least in that way, we can try to mitigate the impact.”