WHATELY — Voters at Tuesday’s Annual Town Meeting will consider the approval of a $5.73 million budget and several marijuana zoning bylaws, as well as authorizing the Selectboard to move forward with the Haydenville Road reconstruction project.

Town Meeting will be held outside Whately Elementary School at 6 p.m. In the event of rain, the meeting will be moved inside the school.

The 26-article warrant is available at bit.ly/3lkyHAE. Explanations for the articles can be found at bit.ly/3NlYdBy.

Town officials will present Whately’s $5.73 million operating budget for fiscal year 2023, which is 5.73% higher than last year’s $5.42 million budget. The greatest increases in the budget come from higher costs to operate Whately Elementary School and the town’s assessments for Frontier Regional School and Franklin County Technical School, much of which is due to enrollment changes.

For Frontier, the town’s assessment has increased by $131,967 to nearly $1.05 million. In February, the school district’s Director of Business Administration Shelley Poreda said Whately’s increased assessment is not out of the ordinary, as each year typically sees one town with a drastic increase due to enrollment and other elements of the budget process.

“We have fluctuations like this every year. Sunderland saw it last year,” she said during February’s draft budget presentation….