DALTON 2025 SPECIAL TOWN MEETING INFO
The 2025 Dalton Special Town Meeting will be at Wahconah High School on June 26 at 7:00 p.m. The original date of June 9th has been changed. This special election is mainly about the Police Department's budget, but there are five other warrant articles to vote on as well. Please come and participate — your vote matters!
*** Please consider arriving 15-20 minutes early to Wahconah, as you will need to sign in with the Town Clerk in order to vote. ***
Residents of Dalton can attend the Town Meeting to vote on the next fiscal year's budget expenditures. This annual meeting is a lot like the House of Representatives "power of the purse," and is facilitated by a moderator using parliamentary rules (here is a link to simplified Robert's Rules of Order). It's very important part of Massachusetts town government.
The Massachusetts Secretary of State has put out a short Guide to Town Meetings, which you can download here:
https://www.sec.state.ma.us/divisions/cis/download/Guide_to_Town_Meetings.pdf
For Dalton's 2025 Special Town Meeting, you can read a description of the Warrant Articles in the Motions and Explanations document, which you can download as a PDF via this link:
Town of Dalton Motions & Explanations for FY26 Special Town Warrant
Some changes in the June 26th Town Warrant
At a Select Board meeting on June 24th, some changes were made to the Special Town Meeting warrant. These include:
*** Please consider arriving 15-20 minutes early to Wahconah, as you will need to sign in with the Town Clerk in order to vote. ***
Residents of Dalton can attend the Town Meeting to vote on the next fiscal year's budget expenditures. This annual meeting is a lot like the House of Representatives "power of the purse," and is facilitated by a moderator using parliamentary rules (here is a link to simplified Robert's Rules of Order). It's very important part of Massachusetts town government.
The Massachusetts Secretary of State has put out a short Guide to Town Meetings, which you can download here:
https://www.sec.state.ma.us/divisions/cis/download/Guide_to_Town_Meetings.pdf
For Dalton's 2025 Special Town Meeting, you can read a description of the Warrant Articles in the Motions and Explanations document, which you can download as a PDF via this link:
Town of Dalton Motions & Explanations for FY26 Special Town Warrant
Some changes in the June 26th Town Warrant
At a Select Board meeting on June 24th, some changes were made to the Special Town Meeting warrant. These include:
- Police Budget is now $1,631,083, reduced $33,841 from expenses. Salaries will remain the same ($1,473,586).
- Berkshire Concrete compliance engineering and technical work funds (allocated from free cash) were increased from $45,000 to $59,000.
In the chart to the right I have used the same methodology for some nearby towns in the Berkshires to calculate a "Police Dollars Per Crime" figure for comparison.
Because these numbers were difficult to verify, I estimate there is at least a +/- 10% variability in their accuracy. FYI, the difference between "Total Crimes per 1,000" and "Total Crimes per 1,000 (alt)" is the source of the data. The first column is widely available public data, the second (alt) column is the result of additional digging across the Internet for sources in each town (local news articles, posted reports from the towns, etc.).
Because these numbers were difficult to verify, I estimate there is at least a +/- 10% variability in their accuracy. FYI, the difference between "Total Crimes per 1,000" and "Total Crimes per 1,000 (alt)" is the source of the data. The first column is widely available public data, the second (alt) column is the result of additional digging across the Internet for sources in each town (local news articles, posted reports from the towns, etc.).
