Last year it took two months for the Selectmen and the School Committee to find $800,000 in cuts and produce a balanced budget. This year the budget gap is $2.9 million and members of the Finance Committee said cutting that much money would effectively shut down departments in the town and cost jobs in the town and the school department.

At Wednesday's Finance Committee meeting, members suggested providing two budgets for Town Meeting, a balanced budget that includes all the cuts and one that includes a Proposition 2 - 1/2 override of more than just the $2.9 million.

"It has to be more substantial [than $2.9 million], we need to show what we're going to do to fix the problem so it doesn't come back again," Finance Committee Chairman LarryMcDonald said. "I don't know how many years away we are from receivership, but it's coming."

Municipalities in Massachusetts are not allowed to file for bankruptcy protection, so when a city or town becomes insolvent, a state appointed receiver is given control over the finances and operations of the city or town.

McDonald said at that point the state will come in and do whatever they want, including raising taxes, without the consent of the voters.

"We don't get to vote on it. We don't get to decide our future any longer at that point, they decide for us," McDonald said.

McDonald said in 2012 he presented a five-year plan from the town administrator to the Selectmen that displayed an $8.9 million structural deficit in the years ahead and the response from the board was, "birds chirping, not a word out of any of them."

Committee members agreed the request for an override needs to include some budget cuts and show what the town will do to repair the economic damage now and prepare the town going into the future.

"The town's been hearing 'we're poor, we're poor' because the administration never took the steps to fix this when they could have and should have," said Marilyn Donahue, Finance Committee vice-chairman. "It was a train wreck bound to happen. We've hit the wall."

"We need to fix it this year, because even if we cut $2.9 million out of the budget this year, next year we're gonna cut just as much out of the budget because this trend is going to continue. It's not going away unless we increase revenue," McDonald said.

Town Administrator Derek Sullivan said in the near future he'll meet with Superintendent of Schools Kimberly Shaver-Hood for preliminary discussions on the two budget proposals.

"We need to say to the people we're in a really tough place now but in three or four years we're going to start looking better and we're going to start doing the things we're have to do," Donahue said.