PETERSHAM – Voters at Monday’s Annual Town Meeting determined that the required 10% quorum to conduct business was just a bit too stringent.

Residents who showed up for the 7 p.m. start time ended up on their cell phones, reaching out to friends, family and neighbors – anyone they could reach – to go to Town Hall so the proceedings could get underway. Finally, at about 7:20 p.m., the required number of 107 voters was in the auditorium and Town Moderator Bart Wendell was able to gavel the meeting to order.

Nearly two hours later, voters had made their way to Article 35 on the warrant, a proposal to amend the town’s bylaw governing the quorum requirement for annual and special Town Meetings. The article proposed reducing the number of registered voters necessary to conduct Town Meeting business from 10% to 7.5%.

The article also called for the number of voters necessary to constitute a quorum be based on the number of registered voters “as of the previous January 1.” This was changed to the number of voters registered as of the final day for anyone to register to vote at the upcoming Town Meeting.

Once this amendment to the article was approved, the proposal to reduce the quorum passed overwhelmingly, with only seven in opposition.

The article dealing with the quorum generated the most debate of any other decided on Monday night.

Earlier in the evening, Advisory Finance Committee Chair Rich Cavanaugh provided voters with an overview of the $5 million general budget proposed for fiscal year 2025. That figure represents a $390,000 – or nearly 8.5% – increase over the current fiscal year’s budget of just over $4.6 million.

Cavanaugh said the FY25 spending package represented work done by the Selectboard and Advisory Finance Committee to make some correction in the non-education budget in the face of rising education costs, an increased debt burden, and a decrease in revenue from sources other than those raised through taxation.

Assuring voters that town officials did their best to keep spending at a minimum, Cavanaugh went on to say, “Using a conservative model for funding the budget, the amount to be raised by taxation is near the maximum allowed under Proposition 2 ½.”

The non-education budget – the amount needed to run the town – totaled nearly $1.9 million. Education spending topped out at just over $3.1 million, representing $958,000 for Petersham’s assessment for the Mahar Regional School District, $140,000 for its Montachusett Regional Vocational Technical School assessment, and $2 million to cover the Petersham Center School budget.

One line item in the municipal budget that elicited a question was the increase in the Fire Department salaries, from approximately $35,000 this fiscal year to $91,000 in FY25. Fire Chief Bob Legare explained that new requirements by the Department of Labor, the cost of additional training for firefighters, and an uptick in calls resulted in the increase to the salaries.

“We did have a 30% increase in the number of calls this year,” he said. “Twelve thousand of that (increase) is also for hazmat training; as first responders were required to do a 24-hour hazmat training. That’s $12,000 that will be on this year. Once we do that we should be able to do four hours every year. We have a lot of new members and that’s why we need to get that training done.”

The vote to approve the proposed budget was unanimous.

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