PETERSHAM – “This is a ten-minute meeting,” said Moderator Bart Wendell Saturday as he called the Special Town Meeting to order. “That’s if no one has any questions.”

As it turned out, there were very few questions, and voters managed to dispense with the three warrant articles in fairly short order.

The central purpose of the meeting was to ask voters to amend the FY25 town operating budget approved at last June’s Annual Town Meeting. Article 2 asked voters to transfer $50,000 from the Tax Title Surveys/Appraisals account, $10,000 from the Town Hall North Parking Area account, and $37,500 from the Stabilization Fund “…in order to reduce the total amount to be raised by taxation in order to meet the allowable levy requirements of the General Laws…”

In other words, the budget needed to be amended to comply with Proposition 2 ½ guidelines.

Reading from a prepared statement, Advisory Finance Committee Chair Richard Cavanaugh explained that the budget approved at the 2024 Town Meeting was “based on forecasts of revenues and expenses. As more accurate numbers for revenues and expenses became available, the Board of Assessors prepared (documents) to be sent to the Division of Local Services of the Mass. Department of Revenue for its approval and review before the town can set its tax rate.”

However, Cavanaugh continued, it appeared that the budget presented to voters “inadvertently exceeded the maximum allowable levy limit set by the commonwealth.”

That budget, he told Saturday’s meeting, exceeded the limit by $95,160.

The budget approved in June 2024, said Cavanaugh, projected an estimated tax rate of $16.11 per $1,000 of property value. The changes proposed at Saturday’s meeting, he said, would result in an estimated tax rate of $14.53 per $1,000 of property value – a decrease of $1.58 per $1,000.

In response to a question from resident Josh Chernin, Cavanaugh said, “Proposition 2 ½ set the brakes on what the town can tax for personal property and real property. You have a levy ceiling; that’s the absolute top a community can tax at, and that’s 2.5% of all taxable property. What we’re talking about here is the levy limit which, as opposed to the ceiling, is determined by the prior year’s levy limit, because you can’t increase (taxes) by more than 2.5% over last year’s levy limit.”

He then added that when budget and taxation figures were re-examined, “We realized that we over-taxed people. We said we were going to tax them $95,000 more than we could. That’s why we’re here today.”

Resident Jill Wessel asked about the impact of the proposed transfer from the Stabilization Fund. Cavanaugh explained that “two years ago we voted to start to replenish the Stabilization Fund, and we’ve got to a little over 3% of the overall budget.”

“Right now, we have $195,000 in our Stabilization Fund – 3.35%of our budget – by doing what we’re proposing today, it would take us down to $158,066, or 2.7% of the overall budget.”

With no more questions, a motion to approve Article 2 was unanimously approved.

A third article asking voters to pay from available funds $955 in legal bills from previous years generated no questions and it too was approved without dissent.

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