ORANGE – The town administrator plans to suggest that voters at Monday’s Annual Town Meeting table a warrant article pertaining to the budget and revisit the matter after a scheduled Proposition 2½ override vote.

Matthew Fortier has said he will propose that those in attendance at Orange Town Hall take no action on Article 4 and reconvene on June 24, a day after the override vote.

“It would be difficult to discuss the budget itself when we don’t yet know the results of an override pending,” he explained at the Selectboard meeting on June 11. “One of the benefits of doing that is you don’t have to create a new warrant, you don’t have repost it.”

Fortier told the Greenfield Recorder that the decision will come down to a vote at Annual Town Meeting, which is slated to begin at 7 p.m. The upcoming override vote will be discussed at a Selectboard meeting scheduled for 5:30 p.m. on June 18. The vote will be held from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. at 62 Cheney St. on June 23.

“It’s a smart move,” Selectboard Chair Julie Davis said at the June 11 meeting.

Orange faces a deficit of roughly $1.7 million heading into FY26. Fortier previously said that even if the town uses $300,000 in free cash, it will still need to find $1.4 million from somewhere. The Mahar School Committee voted in April to approve a 4% budget increase for the next school year. But Orange Selectboard and Finance Committee members have repeatedly voiced frustration with the $673,611 assessment increase the school is requesting from Orange, as this constitutes a 12.8% increase.

State law requires voter approval before a municipality can increase its property tax levy more than 2.5%.

Superintendent Elizabeth Zielinski has said the Ralph C. Mahar Regional School District has averaged a 2.15% budget increase from the previous year for the past six years. She also said decreasing the Mahar budget by the amount that had been requested would have entailed reducing the athletics department to one boys sport and one girls sport per season, eliminating the School Choice bus (which helps bring money into Mahar by transporting out-of-town students), and cutting extracurricular activities, one administrator, some funding to important in-school departments and 17 teaching positions.

There are 44 articles on the Annual Town Meeting warrant. Three pertain to equipment and safety for the Orange Fire Department. Article 28 asks voters if they wish to borrow $2.3 million to purchase two fire trucks and related equipment while Article 29 has to do with appropriating and transferring $20,000 from free cash to buy protective clothing and gear for firefighters. Adoption of Article 30 would appropriate and transfer $7,500 from free cash for the sealcoating and surface maintenance of the town’s secondary fire station at 50 Millyard Road.

Article 32 asks voters if they agree to appropriate $72,000 to purchase a police cruiser and all related equipment, whereas Article 33 would authorize the borrowing of $157,000 so the Highway Department can acquire a Ford F-600 dump truck.

One of the final articles has to do with amending the town’s dog control bylaw. Adoption would tweak some of the bylaw’s language and add definitions to some terms.

The Annual Town Meeting will begin immediately after the Special Town Meeting, which consists of 10 articles. Adoption of one of those articles would authorize the Orange Selectboard to award up to a 30-year lease for the former Gale Brooks School at 168 Athol Road to allow for its continued use as a Head Start location for early care and education services for low- and moderate-income children by a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Fortier explained that North Orange Head Start is run by Community Action Pioneer Valley, which wants to renew its lease that recently expired. He said the former Gale Brooks School sits on the same lot as the Moore-Leland Library.

The meetings will take place in Orange Town Hall’s Ruth B. Smith Auditorium.

Links to the warrants and a fiscal year 2026 budget presentation can be found at: tinyurl.com/Orange2025.

Reach Domenic Poli at: dpoli@recorder.com or 413-930-4120.