LETTER: A Yes Voter Reflects on the Override

To the Editor:

Franklin, You Get What You Pay For

(And Right Now, We’re Paying in Cynicism and Cuts)

Another override. Another narrow loss. Another round of Facebook flame wars and social media finger-pointing.

This wasn’t just a policy failure. It was a civic one.

For the second straight year, Franklin, Massachusetts—my town—was asked a hard but honest question:

Are you willing to invest in the services, schools and infrastructure you claim to value?

And for the second straight year, the answer was: “No, but we’d love to argue about it online.”

Let’s talk brass tacks first. This year’s override was for $3.86 million, down from the $6.8 million proposal that failed in 2024. It would’ve cost the average homeowner about $312 a year. That’s $26 a month.

My small family’s last McDonald’s outing: $38.

In return, we would’ve avoided more staffing cuts to our schools, protected municipal services and preserved programs that have already been hollowed out after last year’s failed vote. We would’ve maintained the town we like to tell ourselves we live in.

Instead, we lost by 185 votes.

And it’s not just the loss that stings. It’s the way we lost. Again.

The conversation around this issue—if you can even call it that—has been embarrassingly bad two years in a row. It’s been partisan. Personal. Petty. Misinformed. Exhausting.

Some people came to this debate with spreadsheets and ideas. Too many others came with conspiracy theories and slightly unhinged rants about property taxes.

Then there were the street signs—oh, the street signs. One house I drove by had 10 on their property alone. Child please.

We didn’t have a civic discussion. We had a turf war. And everyone walked away a little angrier and a lot more cynical.

The comment sections were carnage. The Facebook groups were unstable. And let’s be honest: a big reason this override failed was because so many people saw the tone of the discourse and said, “Nope. I’m out.”

Because who wants to vote for anything when it feels like both sides would rather torch the town than talk to each other?

Franklin doesn’t just have a budget problem. It has a culture problem.

I understand the skepticism. I really do. There’s plenty to critique about how town leadership communicates, how spending gets prioritized and how little faith people have in institutional competence.

I’ve watched the same presentations you have. The town can feel slick when it should feel straightforward. And no, you’re not crazy for wondering if some of these “doomsday” projections are more PR tactic than reality.

But here’s the hard truth: leadership skepticism doesn’t justify civic abandonment. Distrust should lead to engagement—not disengagement.

The answer isn’t to starve the budget and see what survives. That’s not reform. That’s self-harm.

Because whether you like the town manager or not, whether you think the school committee is bloated or brilliant, you get what you pay for.

You want good schools? Fund them. You want full-time fire and police? Fund them. You want a library that doesn’t close early or rec programs that don’t cost a small fortune? Fund them.

Or don’t. But then don’t act surprised when the services erode, the staff leaves and the town feels more like a holding tank than a home.

Here’s what makes me genuinely nervous:

We keep having this same battle. We keep failing to pass overrides that even barely cover basic cost-of-living increases for staff. We keep alienating younger residents who want to make Franklin their forever home.

Meanwhile, fees go up. Class sizes grow. Sports, music and extracurriculars become pay-to-play. And we pretend we’re “holding the line” on taxes while mortgaging our future.

There’s only so long you can eat your seed corn.

So, where do we go from here?

Franklin doesn’t just need money. It needs new blood and new energy.

We need more renters. More families. More people in their 30s and 40s who aren’t afraid of nuance. We need people who understand that civic life is a spectrum, not a scoreboard. People who don’t view taxes as theft or public servants as adversaries.

We need to elect leadership that can communicate clearly and transparently, and we need a voting base that’s engaged but not enraged.

Most of all, we need to remember that this town—like any town—is what we make of it. And if we keep making it a place where nothing passes, no one listens and nobody leads, then that’s exactly what we’ll get.

We’re not going to cut our way to community.

And if we don’t shift course soon, the Franklin we all think we live in will be one of those nice little towns people talk about in the past tense.

-- Frank Kalman

Franklin resident, and "yes" voter