Westport residents will be asked to appropriate anywhere between $2 and $6 million in override spending at this year's Town Meeting, after the Westport Select Board on Monday evening approved more than 30 articles for the Tuesday, May 3 meeting.

The override, which if approved at Town Meeting will then go to referendum, is being proposed as a way to ease a severe cash crunch in both the town and schools' budgets, and to hopefully provide relief to the structural budget deficits that officials believe will continue, year in and year out, without intervention.

Though there is a wide spread at this time on how much will be sought, voters at the very least will be asked to approve $1.847 million to address municipal needs. They won't know how much Westport Community Schools are seeking until a proposed number is released. However, select board chairwoman Shana Shufelt said Monday that she has heard that school officials "have circulated a request for $4 million" in overrides. She said she will reach out to the school committee and Superintendent Thomas Aubin to get an actual number.

Passing an override would allow the town to exceed its state mandated levy increase cap of 2.5 percent, adding an influx of cash that would not otherwise have been possible. Though they have been proposed many times since Proposition 2 1/2 passed, only two overrides have passed in Westport since that date.

Still, select board members believe the time is right, and the needs are real.

""We've been operating in a structural deficit for quite some time now," select board member Brian Valcourt said at a recent meeting. "With state aid not what it once was, "it seems that we're left to fend for ourselves at this point and we have to figure out a way we can do that (but) there's no way we can do it with the current budget."

How it will go

Overrides require approval at both town meeting and via a ballot question, though there is no restriction on which comes first.

Under the town's plan, voters will be asked to appropriate funds under two separate budget questions in May.

First, they will vote on Article 4, which asks voters to appropriate funds for the town and schools' proposed budgets, with no override funds included. Then, Article 5 seeks to go further, asking voters if they want to appropriate specific funds via the override. Town officials plan to spell out where each dollar will go under the 4B question and, if approved at Town Meeting, that override amount would then go to voters as a ballot question at a later referendum (a date has not yet been set).

Following the meeting, Shufelt said she likes the approach the town is taking, as at Town Meeting residents will clearly see and be able to talk about and change each specific line item they want raised or lowered in an override vote. Though it is possible that voters will reject the override question outright in May, she said she is optimistic that it will pass, setting up the referendum. The real challenge will be that referendum, she said, but in the interim between Town Meeting and then, the town will have time to educate the public on the override, and why the town and schools believe they need it.