Grafton Town Meeting approves $82 million budget, override contingency, and school roof plan

Town Meeting · Meeting of May 11, 2026

Grafton Town Meeting approves $82 million FY27 budget and a $1.37 million override contingency in a record-turnout session that briefly broke its own electronic voting system. More than 1,000 voters registered for the May 11 meeting at Grafton High School, exhausting the town's supply of electronic voting clickers and forcing a voice-vote recess before business resumed. Town Moderator Dawn Anderson presided as voters approved the $82,264,860 base operating budget by voice vote, then cast secret paper ballots 575-to-131 in favor of the contingency budget that restores cuts to French classes, elementary band, and middle school sports if a Proposition 2.5 override passes at the May 19 general election.

Town Meeting also approved a capital article that redirects $946,000 from deferred projects toward the Grafton Middle School roof, raising the available allocation to approximately $2.45 million, and separately authorized borrowing up to $4 million for a full roof replacement contingent on a debt exclusion ballot question. School Committee Chair Leora Brahms noted that Grafton ranks eighth from the bottom in per-pupil spending statewide at $16,585 per student.

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Source: the Town Meeting meeting of May 11, 2026, reported from the official video recording and transcript.