East Longmeadow Approved $43.5 Million for Fiber on Top of Debt It's Already Carrying

On August 11, East Longmeadow's Town Council voted unanimously to borrow $43.5 million for a municipally owned fiber network, with no competing proposals evaluated and no outside feasibility study.

The vote adds new debt to a town that's already carrying plenty. East Longmeadow's new $177.5 million high school and $16.9 million pool project have pushed the FY26 tax rate to $19.28 per $1,000 in value, with $1.87 of that tied directly to high school debt. Town officials have spent the past two budget cycles trying to stay under the legal 2.5% levy cap just to preserve what capacity they have left.

Four months earlier, voters in neighboring Longmeadow rejected a much smaller $8.6 million fiber proposal. The town's Finance Committee opposed the financing plan itself, and residents pointed to $321 million in debt already planned over the next five years, including $96 million in school debt, plus a financial model that had been updated just weeks before the vote with little time for review.

Longmeadow slowed down and asked hard questions about debt before committing taxpayer money. East Longmeadow didn't and is on the hook for $43.5 million in new debt, backed by subscriber revenue projections that nobody outside the project checked.

If those projections don't hold, taxpayers are next in line. They deserve a voice in this, too.