Communities across Massachusetts are increasingly turning to property tax overrides as rising costs outpace limits on local revenue growth.
Data from the Massachusetts Department of Revenue shows a sharp increase in both the number of communities placing override questions on ballots and the total dollar amounts requested.
In fiscal year 2026 alone, 54 municipalities placed 74 override questions on local ballots, seeking more than $158 million in additional tax revenue — the second largest total since the early 1990s.
A decade ago, the numbers were far smaller.
In FY 2017, 21 communities placed 26 override questions on ballots statewide. Those requests sought about $19 million in additional revenue.
“We can tell this is going to be a big, big year for override deliberations,” said John Ouellette, senior executive and director of communications at the Massachusetts Municipal Association.
Across the state, he said, communities are confronting similar choices.
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Phineas Baxandall, director of research and policy analysis at the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center, said many of the financial pressures facing towns come from forces largely outside local control, including rising health care costs, higher expectations for public services and education, challenges attracting and retaining a workforce and infrastructure requirements such as costs for recycling that didn’t exist decades ago.
Communities like Marblehead, he said, should expect that addressing long-term challenges will require continued public spending, even when the need is not immediately visible to residents.
“Marblehead, as it approaches the challenges of next decades, should expect that it’s going to require public expenditures to address these things, and it won’t always be immediately clear,” he said.
Baxandall pointed to everyday consequences, such as struggling to find a plumber, that can emerge when municipal capacity shrinks.
“These things have an impact, and they do matter,” he said.
