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Navigating the next few years

What should Brookline decide in the next few years, and what should it watch while it does?

A handful of recurring decisions, most of them about what the Town pays for the services it already provides, will use up or protect the room the base case shows. A few readings each year say whether the forecast is holding and which of those decisions is coming due.

  • The base case has $0.8 million of room in FY2028, $8 million to $17 million a year through the 2030s and $12.4 million in FY2040, if school staffing keeps adjusting to enrollment as it has. That room is capacity for decisions, not a surplus.
  • The largest decisions are pay contracts, health plan costs, school staffing as enrollment changes, and the money freed when the pension liability is paid off. Each is worth tens of millions a year by 2040.
  • The base case already assumes Brookline keeps adding about 105 homes a year, its pace since 2016. Keeping that pace takes steady zoning, permitting and approval work; growing faster is worth more, and runs into physical limits that the budget does not measure.
  • Births, open classroom seats, new growth, fire and medical calls, and pay and health costs, read once a year, show which decision is coming due.
  • One reading is already below the base case: building permits issued in 2024 and 2025, including permits for new homes, point to FY2028 new growth well under what the base case assumes.

Where things stand

If costs and revenue keep behaving the way they have since 2011, and counting the override voters approved in May 2026, revenue covers spending every year to 2040, with room of $0.8 million in FY2028, $8 million to $17 million a year through the 2030s and $12.4 million in FY2040. The base case explains how.

The next few years are the thinnest, and the first risk to them is already visible. Building permits point to FY2028 new growth well below the trend (below). If it comes in there, FY2028 would have a shortfall of about $0.5 million instead of $0.8 million of room.

That room depends on assumptions that are themselves decisions. Pay grows at the Town's 3.0% bargaining target, with schools (3.7%) and Public Safety (3.5%) above it, for average pay growth across all staff of 3.5% a year. School staff fall about half as fast as enrollment as it declines, as they did from FY2019 to FY2025. Health premiums keep rising about 12% a year through FY2029, then settle at 8% a year. The pension money freed in FY2031 goes to paying down the retiree health liability, and once that is paid off it is set aside for a decision rather than counted as room. Any one of these going the other way moves FY2040 by more than the whole room. Other assumptions follow the Town's own plan or policies, on the cautious side: state aid grows 2.5% a year, and free cash left after capital and reserves goes to capital and one-time uses rather than the operating budget.

The decisions ahead

Pay contracts. If pay for all staff grows 1 point a year faster, 4.5% on average instead of 3.5%, it costs $42.4 million a year by FY2040, and the room would fall a little short in FY2028 and run out for good from FY2031. The teachers' contracts expired in August 2026 and are being negotiated now; other Town contracts follow on their own cycles.

Health plan costs. Premiums rising 10% a year instead of 8% from FY2030 cost $30.4 million a year by FY2040. Brookline does not set the rate, but it does set its share of the premium and the plan design, in negotiation with its unions.

School staffing as enrollment changes. The district's consultant, NESDEC, forecasts falling enrollment; updated for the births since counted, that is about 5,400 students by 2040. The School Department's own forecast has it rebounding. The base case has school staff falling half as fast as enrollment, about ten positions a year, which retirements and departures would likely cover. Holding school staff at the FY2027 level instead, as the School Department's FY2027 to FY2029 plan does, keeps that money in classrooms that have fewer students: it costs $27.8 million a year by FY2040, and the room would fall a little short in FY2028 and run out for good from FY2036. If enrollment-linked positions follow enrollment down fully, FY2040 improves by $9.5 million more.

The pension money freed after FY2030. When the pension system reaches full funding, its catch-up payments end. The Town's plan moves that money to the retiree health liability from FY2031; counting it as room instead would add $34.6 million a year to the room by FY2040. The cost is that the retiree health liability, about $214 million in FY2027, would keep rising, as it does now, because the benefit builds faster than the Town currently funds it. With the money moved, $43.0 million a year, the liability is paid off in FY2036 on the actuary's own trend for retiree health costs, and the money is free again, $43 million a year by FY2040. The base case sets that money aside for a decision then and doesn't count it as room; counted, the room in FY2040 would be $55 million. If retirees' costs grew as fast as the base case's 8% premiums, the liability would not be paid off before 2040. Retirees' health care would still be paid each year, but more of what today's employees are earning toward it would be left to later budgets. Rating agencies weigh this, though Moody's lists it behind reserves and school debt among Brookline's concerns.

Police and fire staffing. Fire and medical calls have grown about 3% a year since FY2013, much faster than housing, with medical emergencies much of the rise. A fire company of 20 firefighters comes due once the town reaches about 31,200 homes; at the recent pace of building that is after FY2040, so the base case adds none. If the calls keep rising, the same money could pay for emergency medical response sooner. Police calls have fallen since FY2016, so the base case holds police at the FY2027 budget of 128 officers, with police cost growing a little with each new home. Adding officers as homes are added, to keep pace with nearby cities and towns, would mean 3 more officers by FY2040 and cost $0.2 million a year by then. Returning to earlier staffing, police to 136 officers as in FY2018 to FY2020 and fire to 168 firefighters as in FY2004, would add 16 positions from today's budget and cost $2.5 million a year by FY2040. The base case already counts the increases agreed: new fire steps from FY2028, and four police positions refilled with override money in FY2028 and FY2029.

Zoning, one parcel at a time. A project-by-project estimate charges each new home its own share of police, firefighters and teachers. The Town's budget has not moved that way: costs arrive in steps when town-wide growth crosses a threshold, or barely move when there is spare capacity. New homes and Brookline's budget shows the difference. For a single project, two other questions say more:

Zoning by area. The comprehensive planning process now under way is identifying areas where zoning could allow more housing and commercial space. That is where the growth lever is mostly decided.

Capital. The Select Board's policy puts 6.6% of the prior year's net revenue into capital. The Town held it at 6% for FY2026 and FY2027 for operating relief and plans to return to it in FY2028, and the base case does the same. Holding capital at about 6% instead would leave $3.0 million a year more room by FY2040, with less spent on repairs and equipment. Large school buildings are voted separately, as debt exclusions, and appear on the tax bill rather than in this budget.

Growth: what the base case already assumes, and what more is worth

The base case is not a no-growth case. It assumes new growth of 1.23% of the levy a year, Brookline's recent rate, which includes about 105 new homes a year, the pace of the building permits issued from 2016 to 2025, up from about 41 a year from 2008 to 2015. Keeping it takes steady zoning, permitting and approval work, and it arrives unevenly: 262 homes were permitted in 2022 and 24 in 2025. Building fewer would shrink the room: with renovation and commercial growth at their pace, half as many new homes would leave $6.9 million less room a year by FY2040, and none $13.7 million less. Those figures take away the homes' tax but leave the enrollment forecast as it is, so they show the most the loss could be; net of their students and services, the homes the forecast adds bring in $1.4 million a year more than they cost by FY2040. The Explorer's New homes built setting shows both.

Growing faster is worth more, and its kind matters. Reaching the pace of the fastest-growing fifth of Massachusetts towns through commercial space would add $46.1 million a year by FY2040; through new homes alone, $5.6 million, because new homes bring students and services as well as tax. If enrollment declines as forecast, the schools' empty seats could take the children from about 1,800 more homes by 2030 and about 5,800 more by 2040.

The budget is not the only limit. The Planning Department has flagged two physical ones: only some parts of town can be served by the electric grid for large buildings, and some neighborhoods already have far less open space per person than others. Traffic and access to transit bear on where added homes work well. None of these is in the forecast, and each bears on where, and how much, to rezone.

What to watch, and what each reading tells you

A few numbers, read once a year, show whether the forecast is holding and which decision is coming due.

The first reading is already in, and it is below the base case. Building permits show new growth about two years ahead (New homes and the budget). Permits on taxable property came to $235 million in 2024 and $246 million in 2025, the two lowest years since at least 2018, against $252 million to $378 million a year from 2018 to 2023. (All of 2025's permits add up to more, but the difference is mostly the new Pierce School and other tax-exempt work, which adds no new growth.) Real estate new growth has come to 0.74 to 1.01 times taxable permits about two years later, in the fiscal year numbered three higher (2024's permits feed FY2027), leaving aside business equipment, which permits do not cover. These point to real estate new growth worth about $190 million in FY2027 ($173 million to $238 million) and about $195 million in FY2028, against about $195 million and about $310 million in the base case. FY2027 is about what the base case already holds, the Town's budgeted figure; FY2028 falls short even at the high end of past experience. Permits for new homes were few as well: 34 net new homes in 2024 and 24 in 2025, against the about 105 a year the base case assumes. If new growth comes in at that level for two years and then returns to its trend, the room would be $1.3 million smaller in FY2028, leaving a shortfall of about $0.5 million instead of $0.8 million of room, and about $1.7 million smaller by FY2040 ($0.3 million to $2.1 million). The first check comes this fall, when the Town sets the FY2027 tax rate and the state certifies its new growth. Permits issued so far in 2026, $207 million to September 8, 2026, are on pace for about $300 million, closer to the earlier years.

Reading When What it tells you The decision it informs
Births (423 in 2025) and kindergartners per birth Births each spring; kindergarten each October Whether enrollment follows the base case's decline or the School Department's rebound School staffing; how much housing the schools can absorb
October enrollment against open seats Each fall How much room the schools have for children from new homes Zoning pace; school staffing
New growth, and homes permitted and in the pipeline Each fall, when the tax rate is set Whether revenue is keeping the pace the base case assumes, and how close the town is to 31,200 homes Zoning and permitting; when to plan a fire company
Fire and medical calls Each Financial Plan Whether emergency medical demand keeps rising faster than housing Fire and emergency medical staffing
Pay contracts and health premium renewals As contracts settle; each spring How much of the room the largest levers are using Bargaining; plan design; whether an override is coming

Some readings warn years ahead; others arrive with the decision. Births say the most, and earliest: they set kindergarten five years after birth, which is three to four years after the state reports them, and that class's size through grade 12. New homes and the budget: is there room? explains each lead, with a chart of how far ahead each reading looks.

Enrollment: three forecasts compared sets out the school readings in detail, and updates itself each year.

When to revisit

The Forecast Explorer lets anyone try a different answer to any of these decisions and see what it does to every year to 2040.

Go deeper

Last updated 2026-10-14. What has changed.