WENDELL — The struggle to finalize a Ralph C. Mahar Regional School budget for fiscal year 2026 has spilled into Wendell, where Orange residents and school officials spoke at a Selectboard meeting to advocate for what they want the budget to reflect.

Orange is in dire financial straits and the town’s Selectboard has been asking the Mahar School Committee to make significant cuts to accommodate the budget crisis. Mahar serves Orange, Wendell, New Salem and Petersham, and three of those four towns must adopt the budget at their Annual Town Meetings for it be ratified.

Orange resident Ann Reed spoke at Wednesday’s Wendell Selectboard meeting to explain her town’s fiscal woes. Her comments were countered by Dr. Elizabeth Zielinski, superintendent of the Ralph C. Mahar Regional and Union 73 school districts, and Michele Tontodonato, director of finance and operations. Peter Cross, the Mahar School Committee chair and a 45-year taxpaying Orange resident, said he will vote in favor of the Proposition 2½ override in the election set for June 23.

Reed spoke on behalf of fellow Orange resident Denise Andrews, who was slated to speak but could not due to an unexpected emergency. She said Orange Finance Committee member Kathy Reinig formulated hypothetical figures and sent them to each of the four Mahar towns “with the goal and the belief that they could solve Orange’s terrible financial problem, to some extent, without really harming the Mahar budget.”

Reed said she and others want to decrease “the Mahar budget in a very sane way — without an ax, just a scalpel.”

“It seems kind of, maybe, unprecedented for neighbor to go to neighbor within the Mahar region to try to solve this problem, but there’s something very unusual about this year for Orange,” she said. “It just seems to be especially scary, the idea of losing a great deal of our police and fire protection, because we’re not all very optimistic about an override being passed. They tend not to pass in Orange.”

That town faces a deficit of roughly $1.7 million heading into FY26. Town Administrator Matthew Fortier previously said 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.

In defending Mahar’s requested budget figures, Zielinski said the 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 asked would entail 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 but transporting out-of-town students), and cutting extracurricular activities, one administrator, some funding to important in-school departments and 17 teaching positions.

Tontodonato said drastic cuts always have severe repercussions.

“Every action has a reaction,” she said. “So, if we cut the budget by this much, those students that are eligible to come into Mahar wouldn’t want to come into Mahar, so they would School-Choice out. And those that are School-Choicing in would stop School-Choicing in, because the whole experience is what they’re after. So it would just be a continuous slide down until the end, basically.

“So it is an ax,” she added. “It is an ax.”

“Not a scalpel,” Zielinski chimed in.

Tontodonato also tried to reassure the Wendell Selectboard that the Mahar administration is aware of the challenging fiscal climate and is always responsible and realistic in crafting the budget.

Wendell’s Annual Town Meeting is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. in Wendell Town Hall on Wednesday, June 4. The Orange Annual Town Meeting will be held in Orange Town Hall on Monday, June 16.

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