Great Barrington — The Finance Committee may soon get their way with the Berkshire Hills Regional School District’s administration, if the voters of Great Barrington agree. Tuesday night (January 20) the committee unanimously decided to propose a change in the town charter bylaw that would force both the town and the district to go beyond standard financial reporting and create “special and regular reports” for the committee to analyze.
The proposed bylaw would be added as an article to the warrant, for a vote at Annual Town Meeting May 4.
Committee member Leigh Davis was absent.
Chair Sharon Gregory has been relentless in her pursuit of the district’s books, organized in a manner that she says would be easier to examine at the granular level. “I think this [bylaw change] will help to focus on [the district’s] business of developing reports and recommendations,” she said, and to “not spend so much time researching where the information is or if the information exists.”
Gregory said the town “has been very forthcoming” with their reports, but still, she would like to see more tailored reports generated “as a matter of course.”
The issue was lit to a simmer during the Monument Mountain Regional High School renovation controversy, which threw the district’s finances and related policies under a magnifying glass and created pockets of fomenting distrust in the district amid cries of “transparency.”
For example, Housatonic resident Michelle Loubert Tuesday night remarked that if the finance committee was having so much trouble gathering district financial information, “imagine what it’s like for the average citizen who is paying the money for all of this. I don’t think our websites are being utilized to the full capacity and maybe sometimes that’s intentional.”
The issue hit a rolling boil last month when Gregory, after making numerous requests for more complex reports, was finally told by Superintendent Peter Dillon and School Committee Chair Stephen Bannon that constructing some of those reports was so time-consuming that it dragged Dillon and business manager Sharon Harrison away from the job of running the district. All the state-required financial reporting, Dillon and Bannon said, is available from the district office and the state Department of Education’s website, and the budget is posted on the district’s website. Bannon added that he welcomes a large showing at the district’s budget meetings.
But Gregory, and now the committee as a whole, say that it isn’t enough. Gregory said she has found a number of reports “online and in different places,” but said she “would like it to be part of the habit that we receive these reports.” Gregory, for instance, complained that while she did receive a recent audit report from the district, she got it the same day as the audit meeting.
The original bylaw in the town charter, and adopted in 1974, assigns a budget advisory role to the committee. The new bylaw asks for more from the town and extends the role to the school district: “Regular and special reports and statements concerning the Town’s financial situation and operations, including its enterprise and other funds, and similar reports for the regional school district shall be transmitted to the Finance Committee…”
“I am skeptical that we need a bylaw to do this,” said committee member Michael Wise, though he voted in favor of the proposed change, and has taken his own interest in the district’s finances. He expressed concern about “ratifying it in the bylaw right now when there isn’t a problem,” but also said “it is easier than doing it in the middle of a problem.”
“But I don’t want it to be cast that we are solving a serious problem,” he added. “Because I don’t think we are. When we’ve discovered there’s information we’ve needed, we’ve gotten it, and I think cooperation has been good.”
“Obviously I don’t agree, otherwise I wouldn’t have made the motion,” Gregory said, and pointed out that the school auditor said “there is little documentation in the [district’s] business managers office about the procedures and such…so this helps to establish more formally the processes between the finance committee, school committee, and the municipality. I think it’s for the common good, and part of the transparency principle.”
It is still unclear, however, whether as a separate quasi-municipal entity that also includes Stockbridge and West Stockbridge, Berkshire Hills can be forced to comply with the measure, which, as stated, could demand any manner of reports at the finger snap.
Thomas Blauvelt asked Gregory what specific reports she thought were important, and whether the drafted change was specific enough. Gregory said that Wise had suggested it be written broadly, and Wise said this was to prevent limits on what reports could be requested.
Blauvelt suggested financial documents live on one town website where anyone can see them. Gregory said it would be helpful to have a special “finance committee website where we would put those things.”
Town Manager Jennifer Tabakin pointed out that the Finance Committee does have a website on which to post documents. She also noted that whatever reports the town receives from the School Committee are forwarded to the Selectboard and Finance Committee.
But Gregory expressed frustration that reports didn’t go directly to the committee. “It’s just much too complicated,” she said. “Why don’t we just get it?”
Michael Wise wants it, too, and sees the bylaw as a prudent measure. But he stressed that its creation was not in response to a problem. The proposed bylaw, he said, “describes good practice and current practice.”
