Finance Committee endorses warrant, defers only Case Estates walkway vote

WESTON — March 21, 2019 — Weston Finance Committee endorses nearly the entire May warrant and sharpens its tax-burden message. The committee on March 21 took positions on 23 of 25 Annual Town Meeting articles, deferring only Article 22, a roughly $650,000 Case Estates walkway, and taking no position on Article 1's ballot question. Members supported the $84.4 million FY2020 operating budget, a 4.18 percent tax-levy increase, a $2.2 million OPEB contribution on top of an existing $18.2 million balance, $760,000 for public-safety radio upgrades, $207,000 for water-main work on Children's Road, and rescinding roughly $6 million in unused Case Estates bond authorization. The committee also rewrote its annual report to lead with the line "Weston has the highest taxes in Massachusetts," added a new chart showing total per-household debt and unfunded liabilities of roughly $66,596 — about 2.5 times the next-highest comparison town — and inserted a compounding example demonstrating that 2 percent growth becomes nearly 22 percent over a decade.