To: Town Council
From: Jamie Hellen, Town Administrator
Michelle Monsegur, Deputy Town Administrator
RE: Tax Rate Workshop #1
A central goal for the Town Council in 2026-27 is to evaluate the tax rate.
October 14th is the first in a series of three tax rate workshops and public discussions to be held this fall. The second and third workshops will be held on October 28th and November 18th respectively. The annual tax classification hearing is planned for December 2nd.
On October 14th we will kick off the public discussion with a presentation by three Franklin High School students, Shravan Dev, Arnav Garg, and Saumy Jani, who recently completed a summer internship in the Town Administration Department. They have done an incredible amount of tax rate research with a focus on comparing single vs split tax rates, and we look forward to seeing the outcome of their outstanding work. Their presentation and analysis report is included in the agenda packet for the October 14, 2026 Town Council meeting.
The goal for workshop #1 is to get direction from the Town Council on what information and analysis they would like to see for the following workshops in October and November, ahead of the tax classification hearing in December. It is our recommendation that the Council also allow public comment on this issue during the second and third workshops.
The Assessors’ FY26 tax rate packet from last year’s tax classification hearing is included in the agenda packet as an additional reference."
PDF version of this memo to the Council as part of the Oct 14 agenda
Tax rate package for FY 2026 - https://ma-franklin.civicplus.com/DocumentCenter/View/7790/6a-Tax
Presentation doc (as referenced above)
Comparison Report (details upon which the presentation was drawn from) - https://www.franklinma.gov/DocumentCenter/View/11277/11a-ii-2---Franklin-Tax-Rate-Study-Single-vs-Split-Rate-Analysisdocx
Complete agenda for Oct 14 session
Presentation embedded here: