ORANGE — Annual Town Meeting was postponed again on Tuesday, this time so the Finance Committee could re-evaluate the proposed fiscal year 2026 budget.

Moderator Steven Garrity decided at the June 16 Annual Town Meeting to withhold a vote on the budget until the day after the June 23 Proposition 2½ override vote. State law requires voter approval before a municipality can increase its property tax levy by more than 2.5%, and residents rejected a hike that would have generated an extra $1.4 million to fund town services.

Discussion of town finances continued Tuesday inside Ralph C. Mahar Regional School’s Kermit Cook Auditorium for nearly two and a half hours before voters opted to postpone the session a second time until after the Finance Committee could hold an emergency meeting this morning.

Annual Town Meeting will continue tonight at 7 p.m. in the Mahar auditorium.

Without passage of the Proposition 2½ override, the Selectboard developed a budget consisting of 15% cuts across the board. Those figures were presented at Tuesday’s continuation of Town Meeting, but residents wanted overwhelmingly to have the Finance Committee “crunch numbers” before reconvening.

Various department heads spent weeks imploring residents to adopt the override to avoid staff cuts. On Tuesday, Town Administrator Matthew Fortier proposed figuring out if using free cash could postpone layoffs by six weeks and if a more permanent alternative could be found.

But Police Chief James Sullivan stood up to say a “six-week budget” puts some of his officers in an awkward position. He has previously said failure to adopt the Proposition 2½ override would result in his department laying off five officers and eliminating the overnight shift. He told the roughly 160 voters in attendance that about six departments have already reached out to him to say they will offer jobs to his laid-off officers starting July 1, the start of the new fiscal year.

“You’re leaving us in a weird spot,” he told voters. “What do my officers do? Do they take that job, not knowing if they’re going to have another job here in six weeks? Or do they pass on it in hopes that somehow they’ll be funded? That’s my concern about the six-week plan.”

Fire Chief James Young has previously said Orange Fire Rescue EMS would have to lay off three firefighters and would not be able to operate two ambulances if the override did not pass.

According to Fortier, failure to adopt the override also eliminates Town Hall’s full-time executive assistant, the part-time assistant accountant, assistant collector, assistant town clerk, assistant treasurer, three part-time library positions, two full-time skilled laborers, a part-time sanitation worker and the Orange Council on Aging’s part-time administrative assistant.

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