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To the Editor,
I’m writing as a Reading resident since 2017, a Precinct 3 Town Meeting Member, and a member of the Vote YES for Reading committee, and also, most relevantly, as a parent with one daughter at Killam and another starting at RISE. I’m voting yes on the $6.5 million override this November, and I want to say plainly why, including the parts that aren’t a perfect sales pitch.
We moved to Reading in 2017 mostly because it sits right at the intersection of 93 and 95, nothing more sentimental than a commute. What kept us here was different. Once we had kids, I noticed how much the town just took us in, PTOs, neighbors, people who didn’t owe us anything but made room anyway. Being a Town Meeting member and sitting on a couple of town boards started as my way of paying some of that back. This override is the same instinct applied to a harder question: actually checking the numbers instead of just trusting them, because a town I owe this much deserves more than a reflexive vote either way. It’s also why I joined the committee in the first place, not to cheerlead, but to make sure the case being made actually holds up.
The town’s own numbers show a real structural gap, driven mainly by health insurance costs that have outpaced the town’s revenue growth for years, a much more expensive trash contract, and reserves that are close to tapped out. I’ve spent a fair amount of time this fall reading the actual town and school budget documents rather than taking anyone’s word for it, including the case against this override, and the underlying need holds up.
I know staffing growth has come up in this debate, and I looked into it myself rather than wave it away. It’s real: the district added positions in FY23 and FY24, mostly adjustment counselors and full-time elementary assistant principals, tied to documented student mental health needs and giving principals more instructional support. Staffing has been flat since, and the investment shows up in the results: Reading spends less per pupil than comparable communities while reaching as high as the 90th percentile statewide in academic achievement in recent years.
What’s concretely at stake if it fails isn’t only about the schools. Library hours drop from 60 to 54 a week, with Sunday closures, and the library risks losing its state certification and state aid. The fire department loses 4 positions and delays replacing an ambulance, in a town averaging about six critical cardiac calls a week. Police staffing could fall below what Reading funded after the 2018 override. The DPW loses 2 to 3 more positions, including cuts that remove trash barrels from Reading’s parks and athletic fields.
I won’t pretend this is permanent. The town’s own estimate is three to five years of stability, not a solved problem. But skipping it doesn’t make the gap disappear, it just trades planned stability for immediate cuts, and Reading’s own history, the 2018 override lasted closer to nine years, suggests this buys more time than the floor estimate implies.
I hope you’ll join me in voting yes on November 3rd.
Adi Bengali
Reading resident, Precinct 3 Town Meeting Member
