While they don't support it, members of the Westport Select Board said Monday that they're inclined to keep a $6.876 million override article on the Town Meeting warrant, if only to help educate the public about the town's financial issues and shortcomings.

Why do officials believe an override is  necessary? Read here

The board's stance comes three weeks before the annual Town Meeting on Tuesday, May 3, and after the Westport Finance Committee recently recommended that residents "pass over" the override question without voting on it.

Article Five, if passed at town meeting and approved at by voters at a subsequent referendum, would provide $4.4 million in override funds to Westport Community Schools, and about half that to the town. But in recommending that it be passed over, committee chairwoman Karen Raus said she and fellow members believe the school department's override request is too large to support without more study into why it's needed:

"We felt that's not something that would be acceptable for the residents," said Raus. "We don't want to present something arbitrarily without thinking it through."

Raus and select board chairwoman Shana Shufelt have been vocal in recent months about the need for an override, as the town struggles with a structural deficit, has cut most department spending requests to the bone and expects a similarly tough budget cycle next year.

But support for Article Five wavered after the school department presented its override proposal several weeks ago, coming in with a request that Shufelt said was higher than many had anticipated. By then, the select board had already written the article into the town meeting warrant, though a dollar amount was not included as one did not yet exist.

While Shufelt said Monday night that the board could remove the article from the warrant entirely, she and other select board members think it should stay. She and others believe that while the need for an override still exists, the public hasn't yet been fully educated on why one is crucial for Westport's financial future. Keeping it on the warrant will provide a good opportunity for that, she said.

"Everybody's pretty supportive of the fact that we do need an override ... but (we don't) feel like we have enough information to know how much that override should be," Shufelt said Monday. However, "we still want to make sure that we're continuing the conversation."

"The motion to pass over is going to have discussion," added board member Brian Valcourt.

"We can then have a good healthy discussion" about the need for an override."

Assuming the article is passed over as recommended, select board members said Monday that outreach and education will continue in advance of a special town meeting that will likely be called at some point in the coming months. In the interim, town officials plan to regroup, go over the numbers again, reach out to the public and come up with a proposed amount they think is palatable and justified.

"I did want to kind of push it forward ... but I think passing over" is the right decision for now, Shufelt said. "I'm glad we put it out there and I think we need to keep talking about it."

If the board had opted to remove Article Five, said board member Richard Brewer, "you risk losing momentum (though) one could argue that there wasn't much momentum to begin with."