The City of Newton will spend $183,395 on a special election to fill a vacancy in the Newton School Committee, according to the city’s Finance Committee on Monday.
The special election, scheduled for March 18, will fill the Ward 7 School Committee seat. Amy Davenport formerly held the position but resigned because she moved out of Newton last summer.
Wages for public workers during the election make up $79,000, or 43 percent, of the budget.
$30,000 will go to election workers’ seasonal wages, $4,000 to overtime pay, and $45,000 to workers in other city departments—mostly police officers and Department of Public Works employees—according to Newton Election Supervisor John Doyle.
“Police detail, as you all could probably imagine, is a considerable amount,” Doyle said. “We have one police officer per precinct. We also have an officer at early voting and at the clerk’s office on election day.”
Postage for vote-by-mail applications and ballots accounts for $44,700 of the budget, making up 24 percent of the total bill.
“Postage is not cheap,” Doyle said. “It goes up and up every year.”
Special elections are required if an elected seat is vacated within 15 months of the original election, according to city law. The last school committee election was in 2023.
Ward 4 Councilor-at-Large Leonard Gentile said that it was unfortunate to spend money on a special election eight months before the next school committee election, which will take place in November.
“It’s an awful lot of money for a special election,” Gentile said. “Not to say that people shouldn’t have their representative, but maybe there would have been another way of appointing the person, rather than having to spend that kind of money.”
Resident Alicia Piedalue announced her candidacy for the open Ward 7 seat in December.
