A pre-town meeting will be held by the Town Moderator and Finance Committee on April 24 to discuss and answer questions on the warrant articles prior to Town Meeting on April 28.

A proposed override, a new high school roof and a zoning bylaw are just a few of the articles that voters will be asked to decide on and influence the future of Wareham.

Two budgets will come before Town Meeting at the end of the month: a traditional balanced budget and a contingency Proposition 2 1/2 override budget.

At the pre-town meeting, voters will be able to ask questions about both budgets, how they affect town services and what are the long term outlooks for both plans.

Last month town officials presented a $4.5 million override that still includes many of the cuts in the traditional budget, but provides for the investments needed to maintain a healthy, functioning town and close the gap between expenses that are growing faster than revenues.

"I don't think anybody relishes the idea of the override, but if we're going to invest in our community and we're going to go forward, we need to stop this and position ourselves," said Finance Committee Chairman Larry McDonald at last month's joint meeting between the Finance Committee, School Committee and Selectmen.

The override would provide for police recruits, teachers at the elementary schools, a school and town shared human resource director and funding for many programs such as the Council on Aging, the Library and capital improvements.

Town Administrator Derek Sullivan said the owner of a home assessed at Wareham's average of $230,264 would pay increased taxes $329.34 per year -less than a dollar a day- if the override passes.

He said residents can get the assessed value of their home on the town website, take that number, divide it by 1,000 and multiply that by $1.43 to find each individual's override cost.

A common misconception of the override is that the $4.5 million will be asked of the voters each year in perpetuity. That is false. The override money is only included in the following years taxes in the sense that it rolls over and becomes part of the next year's real estate tax base, upon which the 2.5 percent annual growth is calculated on.

Voters will be able to discuss the five-year budget plan going forward with an override. While override money cannot be legally allocated to programs beyond the first year it is enacted, town officials have a detailed proposal of where they have committed to spending in the future.

Another item on the agenda is the Transfer of Development Rights bylaw. "What this bylaw does is enable private owners to separate their right to develop their land and basically sell it to another property owner in certain parts of town," explained Grant King, a planner with the Southeastern Regional Planning and Economic Development District.

The land owner could make money and preserve critical environmental space by selling his development rights in an area that would be difficult to build, to a land owner in a more residential part of town.

The sender would have a permanent conservation restriction placed on his land, he would still own the land, but could not develop any buildings on it.

The sale would occur in a free market between property owners, but the owner in the "receiving parcel" would still have to go before the Planning Board before being granted any special permits.

Currently, the bylaw only deals with residential units, but selectmen agreed that, if the legislation works, they would add mixed-use retail spaces at some point down the road.

Resident Ed Pacewicz has raised his concerns with the bylaw, mainly that it would allow for far too dense development in residential areas.

The number of development rights approved for transfer, when added to the number already allowed on the receiving parcel, would not exceed 12 multi-unit dwellings per acre or eight single-family dwellings per acre.

The full language of the article can be found here.

Town Meeting voters will also be asked to fund a new roof for the high school, which is over 20 years old and has many tears and leaks.

The high school was one of six schools in the state that the Massachusetts School Building Authority chose over the summer for its "accelerated repair program," which reimburses districts for 68 percent of the cost of projects it approves.

That means project, which will cost no more than $2.7 million, could receive up to $1.8 million from the state.

The town funding of the project is not contingent upon the passage of the override budget.

The pre-town meeting will take place at 6:30 p.m. in room 320 of the Multi-Service Center, 48 Marion Road.

Copies of the town warrant can be printed from the town website: www.wareham.ma.us