The Franklin, MA Town Council met on Wednesday, Feb 11, 2026 as scheduled opening their session just after 6 PM. All 9 councilors were present in Chambers.
Franklin TV video is available for replay
The agenda and docs released for this session
Brief recap:
- After tabling the prior meeting minutes for a future meeting to add some questions that were asked but not reflected in the minutes, they approved a technical change for the Shaw's alcohol license
- The 5 year budget model and forecast was next on the agenda and instead of making a presentation Town Administrator opened for questions. In the discussion that ensured, there was a thread of hesitance to bring back some of the prior cut positions with free cash. There also remains reluctance to staff the Deputy Town Administrator position. An interesting contrast in that the Council needs support to conduct the Town business but they don't seem to want to support the resources required to do so. Hence, no subcommittee meetings among other items wanted but no resources to accomplish. There needs to be a strategy to resolve the deficit but folks seemed to be stuck getting started
- The Capital budget came next and after much discussion to clarify some of the items in the Tier 1 top priority items determined by Town and School, the resolution was amended twice, first unsuccessfully, then successfully before approving Tier 1 with the addition of $75K for some school security cameras and servers.
- Then as the clock turned past 10 PM during their deliberations on the amendments, the Council voted to allow extension of the meeting past their 4 hour curfew. The meeting did close approx. 20 minutes later.
My notes captured in one PDF file - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OUdG4Uju_rM2ro2mJCBeEIXOfSx9T8M0/view?usp=drive_link
