Small towns pay more than half again to run town hall. It never shows up in the total.
Split Massachusetts towns by population and the smallest quarter pays $313 a resident for general government against $201 in the largest — 56% more, in every split tested. Yet total spending per resident has no link to size at all. State and county assessments, which climb from $33 to $137 a head, close part of the gap. The other apparent reason, big towns’ heavier benefit bills, is mostly bookkeeping: once education and fixed costs are added together, size stops mattering.
Every Massachusetts town files its budget with the state in the same categories, which makes it possible to ask something no single budget can: does it cost more per person to run a small town than a big one? Split the 219 towns here into quarters by population — from 2,930–11,523 people in the smallest to 32,091 and up in the largest — and look line by line.
Town hall costs half as much again
General government is the part of a town that exists once whatever its size: the select board or manager, the clerk, the assessors, the accountant and treasurer, elections, town counsel. In the smallest quarter of towns it costs $313 a resident; in the largest, $201 — about 56% more in the small towns.
That survives every split put to it. Among towns that run their own schools, small towns pay 47% more; among towns in regional districts, 45% more. Drop the ten largest cities entirely and the slope is still there (t = −4.7). It is the plainest economy of scale in local government, and Massachusetts, with 351 separate cities and towns each running its own, pays it many times over.
And yet the total does not move
Here is the puzzle. Total municipal spending per resident is $4,939 in the smallest quarter and $4,638 in the largest — and across all towns it has no relationship with size at all (t = −0.8). Something on the big towns’ side eats the saving. Two lines look like candidates. Only one of them is.
Real: what the state and county charge
Every town pays assessments to the state and county — the charges for regional transit, for residents who attend charter schools, and more. They climb steeply with size: $33 a resident in the smallest towns, $137 in the largest (t = 7.0). The six towns charged most per head are Cambridge, Chelsea, Boston, Lawrence, Everett, Fall River.
Charter schools are part of that, not all of it. Towns that host a charter school pay a median $214 a resident in assessments, against $53 for towns that do not — but even among the 186 towns with no charter school, the charges still rise with size (t = 6.1).
Mostly bookkeeping: “fixed costs”
The other candidate looks even better at first. Fixed costs — benefits, insurance, pensions — run $542 a resident in the smallest towns and $917 in the largest. It is tempting to say the big towns’ benefit bills swallow their savings. The data does not support it.
Small towns are mostly members of regional school districts — the median regional member has 8,843 people against 22,970 for a town that runs its own schools — and a regional district employs its own staff. Their costs reach the town inside the education assessment, not on its fixed-cost line. Put regional membership in the model beside size and it does nearly all the work (t = −7.6). Then add education and fixed costs together, which takes the question of which line a cost is filed on off the table, and town size stops mattering (t = −0.9). The two lines combined are $3,059 a resident in the smallest towns and $2,997 in the largest.
So the honest account is narrower than the tempting one. Small towns really do pay more to run themselves; big towns really do pay more to the state and county; and the apparent difference in benefits is mostly a difference in where the books put the school staff.
What this means for a buyer
- A small town is not a cheaper town to fund. The total per resident is the same, so the tax bill is driven by the property base, not the head count.
- Compare totals, not lines. A line-by-line comparison between a regional-district town and one with its own schools is comparing two filing systems. The total per resident is the number that means the same thing everywhere — with one exception for college towns.
- Read a town’s committed costs with its district in mind. The share of a budget promised before anything is decided is built on the same fixed-cost line, so a town in a regional school district will show a smaller share partly because its school staff are filed elsewhere. Compare it with towns organised the same way.
How this was measured
Spending is each town’s FY2025 general-fund expenditure by category from the state’s Schedule A, divided by its census population. A town counts as a regional-district member when the high school district named on its page is not its own; charter schools are counted where the school list on the town page places one in the town. Models are least squares on spending per resident with log population and regional membership. Quarters are by population, and figures are medians. Boston’s neighborhoods share the city’s budget and count once; Cape and Islands towns that filed no figures are left out. See the methodology, or download the tables. Figures as of October 9, 2026.
