On Wednesday, April 22, sixty-three voters filled the equipment garage at the Acton Water District [AWD, District] headquarters for a Special District Meeting, and voted decisively to approve a FY27 [fiscal year 2027] expense budget of $9,578,431.
The Special District Meeting was necessary because, as reported by the Acton Exchange, at the regularly scheduled Annual District meeting on March 18, voters had narrowly voted against an expense budget of $ 8,580,431. The warrant for the April 22 meeting included just one article: “To see what sums of money the District will vote to raise and appropriate to defray the usual expenses of the District.”
After introductory announcements by Moderator Bill Mullin, the meeting got down to business with a presentation by District Manager Matt Mostoller. Mostoller provided more detailed information about the District’s expenses than had been made available to the voters at the March 18 meeting, walking the voters through the largest and most-changed line items on the budget. He also explained why the budget being requested on April 22 was higher than the budget presented on March 18: in the intervening time, District staff had discovered that equipment in the Kennedy Wellfield in North Acton is going to require much more extensive repair and replacement than had been anticipated, and also that water meters were beginning to fail. While the South Acton and Central Acton Water Treatment Plants had been having their PFAS upgrades installed, the North Acton wells had been pumped nearly continuously without adequate time for them to be shut down and rehabilitated.
Commissioner Erika Amir-Lin then spoke to the motion. She emphasized that a budget is not just a spreadsheet, but also a vision of the future. She called voters’ attention to several efforts that are underway to discern and articulate the future of Acton’s water and the Acton Water District: a revision of the Water Master Plan (last updated in 2018 and including a Capital Improvement Program), a study of the cost and feasibility of connecting to the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority system (a more detailed and localized study than that previously reported by the Acton Exchange), and a water rate study (unanimously requested by voters at the 2023 Annual District Meeting through a non-binding citizens’ petition warrant article). She noted that much of Acton’s infrastructure was installed while Acton was being “suburbanized,” and is now in need of additional investment.
AWD Finance Committee [FinCom] Chair Bill Guthlein then spoke for that committee. He said that FinCom recommends the proposed budget, including the Kennedy well work. This is in contrast to their position at the Annual District Meeting, where FinCom had made no recommendation.
Equipped with these budget details and broader vision, voters responded with many questions: why the meter replacement line item was so much larger than in FY26, why the need for meter replacement had not been anticipated, whether there was state money available to cover any of these expenses, how lead pipe remediation was being funded, why some of the unanticipated expenses couldn’t have been covered by the large amount of free cash, what level of free cash is appropriate to carry forward from year to year, and whether water bills will continue to go up or might we hope for a rate decrease after these one-off expenses are paid for. Each question was answered by Commissioner Amir-Lin or District Manager Mostoller; you can hear their answers onActonTV’s recording.
After the last of the voters’ questions had been addressed, Moderator Bill Mullin opened the voting on the motion to approve the FY 27 budget as proposed. The ayes won decisively in a voice vote.
Yet another Special District Meeting will be required to vote on seven warrant articles dealing with transfers from surplus revenue, also known as free cash. These articles were passed over at the March 18 meeting, because the District had not yet received its free cash certification from the Massachusetts Department of Revenue. In response to a question from a voter, Mostoller said that the District had not yet submitted the paperwork for the free cash certification. The additional Special District Meeting is likely to be in late May or June, before the new fiscal year begins on July 1.
Kim Kastens is a member of the Acton Exchange Board and an associate editor. She is also the chair of the Green Acton Water Committee, and has previously published on the Green Acton website both a backgrounder and an opinion piece about charging for water. At the 2023 AWD Annual District Meeting, she was the advocate for a Citizen’s petition warrant article requesting that the AWD commission an external expert study of options for structuring future water rates. Living in the far northeast corner of Acton, she is not a customer of the Acton Water District.
