The Town of Northborough Community Preservation Committee opened its Jan. 2 continuation hearing with an overview of Community Preservation Act revenues and reserves and considered a request from the Open Space Committee to add CPA funding to the town’s conservation fund.

The committee chair reported expected new CPA revenues for fiscal 2026 of $840,000, an affordable housing reserve balance of $279,863 and an unreserved account balance that the chair gave as $590,967, producing roughly $1.7 million in available resources when combined with reserves. The chair also noted an annual White Cliffs bond payment of $16,575 that the committee typically funds from new revenue and an administrative set‑aside of up to 5% of new revenue (about $42,000), leaving the committee with its working totals for allocations.

The Open Space Committee requested a $200,000 allocation from CPA new revenue to rebuild the town’s conservation fund. Leslie, a committee member, proposed increasing that figure, saying, “I will propose that we increase it to 500,000.” Other members cautioned that putting money into a conservation fund creates a restricted bucket that cannot later be reallocated for other CPA uses, so they discussed balancing the conservation request against the desire to preserve unreserved funds for other priorities.

No vote was recorded on Jan. 2. Members agreed to continue discussion as part of the overall review of CPA applications and to return to final allocation decisions at a later meeting when all applications and reserve requests were considered together.