ROYALSTON – The Selectboard will meet with the town’s Finance Committee Thursday night in hopes of determining the best way to provide at least one full-time officer to the police department in the year ahead.

At their meeting Tuesday night, the Selectboard met with Police Chief Curtis Deveneau to consider several budget options, one of which would provide funding at current FY24 levels and maintain a part-time staff, another which would add one full-time officer, and another to provide two full-time officers.

The board needs to make a decision by early next week in order to ensure any proposed Town Meeting article is reviewed by the town’s attorneys prior to its inclusion on the warrant. Town Meeting is scheduled for Saturday, June 8.

Selectboard Chair Rick Martin said there have been discussions with Athol regarding a possible intermunicipal agreement to regionalize police coverage. However, no such agreement would be ready in time for inclusion on the Town Meeting warrant and, he added, that would be the most expensive of all options the board has seen.

The Police Department’s current budget is $133,843, which includes wages, expenses and academy tuition. The addition of a full-time officer in FY25 would add $71,000 to that total, bringing next fiscal year’s budget to approximately $205,000.

The two options for funding a new full-time officer under consideration include allocating $71,000 from the stabilization fund or asking voters to approve a Proposition 2 ½ override. The use of the stabilization fund was raised by Martin as a way to avoid an override. However, Royalston Finance Director Rebecca Krause-Hardie said she is uncomfortable using stabilization funds to cover departmental wages.

“My biggest worry is that we either stay exactly where we are, or we start cannibalizing all the other departments to get to where we want to be,” said Martin. “That would be a horror show.”

Deveneau said if the town was able to come up with the money for one full-timer, he might be able to add a second full-time officer through a federal Universal Hiring Grant. Even with the grant, he explained, the town would eventually have to come up with the funds to take over the cost of the position.

“They’d give us 75% one year, which is good, then the next year it’s 50-50, then the next year they drop it to 25 (percent) to kind of keep it going,” he said. “When we get to the fourth year, we’re on our own.”

The board decided that the best move would be to add one full-time officer, using either stabilization monies or an override, and the matter would be discussed further at Thursday night’s meeting with the Finance Committee. That meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. at Town Hall.

In the meantime, the board instructed Deveneau to submit a grant application in the hope – if all goes well – of adding two full-time officers to the department.

Greg Vine can be reached at gvineadn@gmail.com.