COLRAIN — The Selectboard has approved reducing the broadband budget by $26,756 for fiscal year 2026, a change that, if approved by Annual Town Meeting voters, will lower the monthly cost for broadband users by $5.

Municipal Light Plant Manager Michael Slowinski, when presenting the $756,976 budget to the Selectboard last week, said most of the department’s costs are under contracts for the next several years and aren’t going to change. The current budget, by comparison, is $783,732. With fixed costs from providers like Whip City Fiber, and some costs coming in lower than budgeted, the department is able to lower its user fees.

“I’m proposing that we are going to lower the costs by $5 a month,” Slowinski said. “We know what our phone charges are, we know what our internet charges are — those are fixed for the next 10 years.”

Slowinski said he has budgeted $1,000 for unpaid user fees, but the number of unpaid fees will likely be much lower. This year, the department only had about $300 in unpaid user fees, and Slowinski said the department has found great success in billing people, or their insurance companies, for equipment repairs necessitated by vehicle crashes.

“We have collected this year, between traffic accidents and back things owed, almost $9,000,” he noted.

Slowinski said the department could lower costs even more if users were to switch to paying by direct withdrawal from their bank accounts instead of using credit cards. Colrain Broadband pays roughly $22,000 per year in credit card processing fees; if more people switched to paying directly from their accounts, those fees would be lower and the savings would be passed on to users.

The Selectboard voted unanimously to approve the budget and thanked Slowinski for his work in lowering costs.

“I think you’re the only budget that went down,” Selectboard Chair Emily Thurber told Slowinski.

Colrain Broadband prices are currently $89 a month for internet and $60 a month for phone service, or phone service is reduced to $12.95 per month if it is bundled with internet. If the proposed budget is approved at this year’s Annual Town Meeting, Colrain Broadband users will see their monthly costs go down when fiscal year 2026 begins in July.

The Selectboard plans to continue reviewing the proposed budgets from the town’s various departments in the coming weeks. Town Administrator Diana Parsons told the board that she and the Finance Committee are working to finalize numbers, but will not be able to present the full budget and the town’s capital requests until the assessments from Franklin County Technical School and the Mohawk Trail Regional School District are finalized.

“I have the health insurance numbers and all the assessments in from the [Franklin Regional Council of Government], but the two numbers we don’t have are the schools. We don’t have Franklin County Tech or Mohawk,” Parsons said. “It’s just too premature to put those numbers out without the school.”

Additionally, Parsons said, Colrain’s free cash has not yet been certified, which has impacted the town’s ability to budget for capital plans.

Parsons added that some of the largest budgets come from the schools and the Highway Department, which the town is hoping to grow. During last week’s meeting, the Selectboard voted to offer one of the Highway Department’s seasonal laborers a full-time job.

While the numbers have not been finalized yet, Parsons said she believes the town is in a good spot financially. Colrain’s budget has been under its levy limit for years, and the town has excess levy capacity it could tap into if needed.

“The town of Colrain is in an excellent, excellent financial position,” Parsons said.

Reach Madison Schofield at 413-930-4579 or mschofield@recorder.com.