After months of planning, Hudson’s Budget Committee began the lengthy process of going through the 2025-2026 town budget.
“The proposed 2026 town budget was prepared with the goal of balancing our obligations to the citizens of Hudson to present an affordable budget, and the needs of the town departments to provide the best possible value for the excellent services provided for the citizens,” said Selectmen Chair, Bob Guessferd. “This includes ensuring that our tax rate remains as low as possible, as well as getting competitive wages for our employees, and being able to pay for goods and services in the face of ever-increasing prices.”
In the role of Acting Town Administrator, despite his formal retirement at the end of last August, Steve Malizia agreed to make a presentation to the Budget Committee for another year.
“To summarize, the Board of Selectmen voted to send the Budget Committee a general fund operating budget of $39,130,051, a sewer fund operating budget of $2,457,392, and a water fund budget of $3,9741,199,” explained Maliza. “The projected tax rate for the operating budget is $5.45 per $1,000, which is a $0.33 increase per thousand from the FY25 town portion of the estimated tax rate of $5.12.”
The official tax rate will be set in December. Warrant articles had not yet been forwarded to the Budget Committee. The water and sewer funds do not contribute to the tax rate.
The budget also had an estimated $18,943,183 worth of non-tax revenue to offset part of the tax rate and the default budget was $37,170,866 for the general fund. The debt level of the town remained relatively low, and Maliza believed town finances to be on “sound footing.”
Town IT Specialists, Doug Bosteels and Vin Guarino, were also at the meeting to answer questions related to the Department’s section of the town budget. The operating budget was 2% higher compared to last year.
“One of the greater challenges many businesses have is the threat of cybersecurity. Could you comment on what Hudson may face in regard to that and also where that aspect is covered within the budget?” asked Committee member, Bob Wherry.
Bosteels assured the town there were firewalls along with antivirus software in place to protect against cybersecurity attacks.
“We do a lot of training for our users as well,” he added. “Users have to take training to learn what not to click on if there’s a threat.”
Committee member, Shawn Jasper, wanted to know why some software subscriptions saw a significant spending increase.
“A lot of that cost is infrastructure related to software support cost,” said Bosteels. “Vendors that we pay for their support should something happen to our infrastructure.”
“We do have a few applications that are in the cloud,” added Guarino, saying much of the infrastructure was there for redundancy.
According to the specialists, inflation was hitting the cost of those services particularly hard.
“When you get a software license and either go with the bronze, gold, or platinum packages for subscription-based licenses, how do you go about figuring that out as far as cost is related?” asked Committee member, Rich Weissgarber.
Guarino indicated that the decision was based on what their hardware required. Other costs were related to the periodic replacement of office computers.
