ROYALSTON – Voters will face an 11-article warrant when they gather for a Special Town Meeting this Thursday, with all but one related to the town’s free cash account.
The Royalston STM will be held on Nov. 12 at 7 p.m. at Royalston Town Hall.
Article 2 calls for a transfer of $15,000 from the town’s free cash account to cover legal bills. Articles 1 and 4 ask voters to approve the transfer of funds from free cash to pay unpaid bills from FY26 totaling just over $6,300.
Article 3 seeks $7,500 to cover FY27 costs related to “the collective bargaining agreement between the Town of Royalston and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, AFL-CIO, Council 93, Local 1887,” from July 1 of this year through June 30, 2029. That contract covers the Public Works Department employees.
Voters are also asked, in Article 5, to vote on taking $2,188 out of free cash to pay for improvements to Pete & Henry’s Park in the South Village. According to wording in the article, the money would help pay for “a welcome sign, steps to the seating area, a retaining wall, improvements to the sundial area and related costs.”
Article 6 calls for a $839.42 transfer to the Stabilization Fund the unexpended balances of the Oil Spill Emergency Fund. Article 7 seeks $6,911 from free cash to cover the municipal deficit related to the Municipal Light Plan.
Articles 8 and 9 may generate the most discussion. The first asks voters to approve creation of a Police Department stabilization fund, and the second asks just over $114,000 be taken from free cash or other available accounts and deposited into this new account.
Finance Committee member Linda Alger explained that the money comes from a $173,000 override that voters approved in September 2025 to pay for a full-time police chief and a second full-time officer. Some of that money, she said, was used for salary-related costs, but the remainder, $114,000, remained unspent after a year and automatically went into free cash.
“In this day and age of reform and the POST (Police Officer Standards and Training) Commission, there’s going a lot of other stuff the Police Department needs,” Select Board Chair Bill Chapman said. “Once we have the two officers, there’s going to be a lot more to go along with that. The town voted this money to get the Police Department to a better place, so we thought that, rather than that money going back to the town to be used for other things, it should be put back into the Police Department so they can pay for these other needs they’re going to have coming to do.”
Articles 10 and 11 seek money from free cash to deposit into the town’s Capital Stabilization Fund and town Stabilization Fund, respectively. An amount will be determined at the STM.
According to Alger, there is approximately $150,000 currently in the account.