The ink was hardly dry on the Rockport Select Board’s approval of the town’s new proposed budget before they took to these pages to pat themselves on the back for their achievement — the first proposed budget in 16 years with zero growth.

And indeed, a flat budget is a significant achievement, especially when it comes to this Select Board, which ranks among the most profligate in Rockport's history. 

Denise Munger, the Board chair, first joined the Board in June of 2019. That year, total municipal spending was a hair over $6 million. This year’s budget? $12.6 million. A doubling of town spending in just five years.

Kim Graffam and Michael Thompson both joined the Board in June of 2023. Their terms are ending this year. The first budget they approved as Board members, the FY25 budget, has the distinction of containing the largest single-year spending hike in memory – from just under $9 million in FY24 to $11.4 million in FY25 – a staggering $2.4 million budget increase. In one year.

By way of comparison, it took a dozen years — from FY08, when the town spent $3.8 million, to FY20, when it spent $6.2 million — for Rockport’s spending to go up by that same $2.4 million. 

Munger, Graffam and Thompson did it in a single year.

The letter’s final signatory, John Viehman, who was elected to the board in 2024, joined the others in signing off on the current FY26 budget, which increased spending by yet another $1.2 million, on top of the $2.4 million increase the year before. 

Strangely, I don’t remember any letters from this Board explaining why they needed to double town spending in five years. Now, under significant pressure from the Budget Committee and all of you (Rockport voters nearly voted down the proposed budget last year), they have at least stopped making it worse.

The damage, though, has already been done. These spending hikes are so immense and stack on top of each other in such a way that it is easy to lose track of the sheer scale of their combined impact.

One way to think about it is to add up the total amount of additional spending over historic baselines. As I illustrated in a recent column, Rockport’s municipal spending used to go up by an average of about five percent per year. Had we continued that trend all the way up to the present day, the budget that the Board just approved would be almost $4 million less than it is.

And that is with spending rising five percent per year.

If you sum up the total additional spending above baseline that has been approved by Ms. Munger and her colleagues in recent years, it totals a staggering $14 million. The chart below shows the cumulative total of these spending hikes over that time.

Understand what this means. That $14 million in additional spending, which works out to be $10,000 for each of Rockport’s roughly 1,400 households, is money that could have stayed in the pockets of Rockport taxpayers if we had just held spending to that historic rate. Instead, spending exploded, property taxes shot up as a result, and today, young families struggle to stay here in town.

And as we confront massive capital costs in the years ahead—$10 million for a new Public Works building, $6.5 million in renovations to the Town Office, and another $4.7 million for the Public Safety building—that $14 million that we could have used to help cover these costs has already been spent.

Yes, you say, but the new budget actually decreases spending, doesn’t that mean we’ve turned some kind of corner here?

The proposed budget is indeed a break from recent trends, but the best way to think about it is as a one-year reprieve from what has become a pattern of endless spending hikes. In their letter, the Select Board neglected to mention that Rockport Town Manager Jon Duke is already projecting that town spending will resume its steady upward march next year, growing by more than $300,000 over this year’s budget and topping $13 million total, for the first time ever, for FY28.

Worse still, as I wrote back in February, there is no property tax relief in this budget, and none in sight, even if this budget, for this one year, holds the line on added spending.

Remember that when you go to the Town Office this week to pay your property taxes.

This is also why, alone among my Budget Committee colleagues, I voted against the proposed budget. When voters see the Town Warrant in June, they will see a single thumbs down on the budget, from yours truly.

In columns to come, I’ll explain that vote more fully. 

I’ll also explain why Rockport voters should join me in opposing the budget when it comes to them this summer, and why other changes will be needed—including who represents them on the Select Board—if we’re going to turn this thing around and begin to undo the damage of the last few years.

Stephen Bowen lives in Rockport and is a member of the Rockport Budget Committee