Hadley Finance Committee sets joint meeting for year-end transfers, launches FY28 planning

HADLEY — June 22, 2026 — Hadley Finance Committee charts post-override path with new town administrator. At its June 22 meeting, the committee — Chair Amy Fiden, Peter Matusko, Pam Hegg, and Paul McCretzky — held its first substantive session with newly appointed Town Administrator Nate Loi, who described Hadley's roughly $22 million budget as structurally lean and warned that the spring Proposition 2½ override "gives us a year or two" before the town faces the same gap in FY28. Loi outlined revenue strategies including a Planning Board study of a 40R smart-growth overlay along Route 9, pursuit of a local meals and lodging surcharge stalled in the state legislature, and reform of the state PILOT formula for preserved land, which he said pays some Western Massachusetts towns as little as $10 per acre. The committee voted unanimously to approve six sets of deferred minutes, agreed to target a joint meeting with the Select Board on July 8 or 9 for year-end budget transfers before the July 15 statutory deadline, and committed to a public budget-education series — covering free cash, debt, and capital planning — to launch in August or September ahead of the next budget cycle.