Stockbridge — Well, it’s not exactly taking the bulk of school funding pressure off Great Barrington as many are hoping, but every little bit might help and the work isn’t yet done.
The Berkshire Hills Regional School District’s (BHRSD) Regional Agreement Amendment Committee (RAAC) Tuesday (September 20) voted to have each town pay for future capital costs based on a state formula that calculates a town’s wealth based on the full value of all its taxable property.
The amendment will be brought to special town meetings for approval in the three district towns of Great Barrington, Stockbridge and West Stockbridge.
What this means is that towns will pay for future improvements or building projects for the district’s three schools based on what the state calls “equalized value [EQV],” defined as the “full and fair cash value” of all taxable property in a town. EQV is calculated every two years.
The EQVs of the three towns as of 2014 are as follows: Great Barrington, $1,353,030,900; Stockbridge, $827,768,800; and West Stockbridge, $380,910,500.
Right now towns pay both the district’s $25 million (this year) operating and capital costs based on enrollment numbers from each town. That funding method will still apply for operating costs, and the new EQV method for capital costs will not apply to debt on past borrowing.
RAAC and school committee member Richard Dohoney had drafted the amendment to the Regional Agreement.
“We’re going to have big capital issues coming down the road,” Dohoney said. “The only way this will affect anyone is if we do a big project.”
Amid fast-rising school budgets that have shot property taxes ever skyward in recent years, Great Barrington taxpayer anger has translated into close calls over cuts to programs and two failed attempts at renovating a deteriorating 50-year-old Monument Mountain Regional High School.
Because the funding method agreed upon back when the schools were regionalized is based on a per-pupil headcount and Great Barrington has more students than the other towns, Great Barrington pays more. In doing so it takes on the bulk of the annual school budget increases that are due almost entirely to rising insurance costs and other uncontrollable factors. And it doesn’t help that the state, in recent years, has had an abominable record of reimbursing transportation outlays in rural districts like Berkshire Hills.
Great Barrington pays just over 50 percent of the total district budget’s operating and capital costs, and 70 percent of those costs allocated to the three towns. This year, for instance, Great Barrington is paying an additional $900,000 to support the district, an increase of almost 7 percent over last year.
Stockbridge pays 15 percent, and West Stockbridge 14.6 percent.
At a series of sometimes clamorous RAAC meetings over the last year, members from all three towns batted around ideas to try to solve a problem that may make Great Barrington voters continue to hold a Monument High renovation hostage until Stockbridge in particular offers to pay more for the schools.
Great Barrington RAAC member Chip Elitzer proposed a system that would, over time, have each town pay its share of the total district budget assessment according to the same formula just approved for future capital expenditures. That idea was dead on arrival last spring. He has made the point again and again that “Stockbridge is property-rich and child-poor [due to a preponderance of older second homeowners], and Great Barrington is property-poor and child-rich.”
Elitzer said Dohoney’s capital funding amendment was a “small step in the right direction.”
BHRSD Business Manager Sharon Harrison ran numbers of a hypothetical future capital project with an estimated debt service of roughly $1.7 million. She calculated the cost difference to each town between the current per-pupil funding method and the proposed EQV capital funding method. Over a five-year period, this new capital funding method, if adopted, would save Great Barrington close to $300,000 on its debt service each year for five years. Stockbridge would have to spend around the same amount more with this new plan. West Stockbridge would save a minimal amount.
Elitzer said, while he supports this amendment, “I want to make sure we don’t mislead ourselves on the impact of the voters.”
He went on to refresh everyone about voter behavior regarding the schools over the last few years. “They really care about tax fatigue,” he said.
At Great Barrington’s annual town meeting in May, for instance, taxpayers voted symbolically against the school budget as leverage to get the other towns to pony up more. A special town meeting later approved the budget as expected, but Elitzer said it demonstrated something.
“There is a breaking point among voters,” he went on. “I would suggest that, if mill rates were flipped, the votes would be flipped also.”
Dohoney acknowledged taxpayer “outrage,” and said that indeed, his amendment, which only changes the way towns pay for improvements, is “not a quick fix.”
RAAC and school committee member Dan Weston said he thought it “extraordinary…that we came to some sort of financial agreement.”
But Dohoney said the really big changes are never easy.
“We’re not going to be able to overturn the status quo unless people are willing to get in fights,” he said.
Elitzer later told the Edge that his ideas here are “not about fairness or principle; it’s about achieving financial viability for K through 12 financing.”
