Great Barrington — It was a love and laughter fest at Town Hall Tuesday (December 22), as representatives from 17 Berkshire County towns and superintendents of six local school districts were assured by Gov. Charlie Baker and Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito that not only did they know how hard it is to run a town and its educational infrastructure, but that they have the towns’ collective backs as they attempt to share services to survive and prosper amid economic challenges.
“This is a historic day,” said Rep. William “Smitty” Pignatelli (D-Pittsfield), whose hard work and tenacity was noted by all for pulling together the Community Compact, today signed by an official from every town and representatives of the six school districts. “It’s unprecedented, unheard of.” He added he thought this collective effort could be a “model for the state and possibly for the entire country.”
The Compact includes West Stockbridge, Tyringham, Sheffield, Washington, Stockbridge, Richmond, New Marlborough, Lenox, Lee, Becket, Egremont, Sandisfield, Mount Washington, Alford, Otis, Monterey and Great Barrington, as well as Berkshire Hills, Southern Berkshire, Farmington River School District, Lee, Lenox and Richmond school districts.
It comes after the Baker-Polito administration’s release earlier this year of $100 million in money for local roads and bridges. Between $8 million and $9 million of that funneled into Berkshire County, and another $7 million to $8 million for the county came from the MassWorks Infrastructure Program.
Gone are the days, it appears, when every little rural town could afford to have its own separate everything. It’s a national problem, too. Pignatelli told an overflowing and televised Town Hall meeting room that a friend in Iowa said rural parts of that state are going through similar changes in demographics — population reductions and aging residents — that make it hard for people to keep up with the tax man, and hard for towns to keep up their infrastructure.
Since this work to get the towns talking began, for instance, “the Lee and Lenox Building Departments are not separate,” said Lenox Town Manager Chris Ketchen, an Alford native. Sheffield and New Marlborough, with their tiny populations and many miles of roads, have started sharing public works equipment, he added. “Smitty’s done his work — now we have to do our work.” He further said things no longer needed studying, but action. “Let’s not be pulled into the paralysis of analysis.”
Pignatelli noted that as former Selectboard members in their hometowns, Baker and Polito understand local challenges, particularly that of trying to squeeze dollars out of state fists. As a result, he said, the entire administration is full of “outside the box” thinkers. Yet “they don’t think the government is the answer to everything,” he added.
Ketchen praised the Baker administration’s red-tape-cutting executive order that puts Polito in charge of municipal issues across the state at the local level, and even includes, within the Department of Revenue, a new Senior Commissioner for the Division of Local Services.
“It’s seismic,” Polito said of towns’ willingness to share in such a big way. “It’s appropriate for where you are today,” she said. “If you want that next generation to lay their roots here you need great jobs and great schools.”
With that, Polito hit the heart of the current rural problem. Rural towns are having trouble adding jobs and keeping schools running. Municipalities and school districts are scrambling to deal with it, and now the administration says it’s on the deck, throwing life preservers west.
The hard work still has to be done locally. Already the six local school districts are making progress by having very real discussions about mergers between some districts, and the possibility of sharing Berkshire Hills Regional School District Superintendent Peter Dillon with two other nearby districts. A state grant for upwards of $100,000, and donations from local banks, will help with the work, Dillon told The Edge.
Before the signing, Great Barrington Town Manager Jennifer Tabakin was clearly thrilled. She told The Edge that the partnership between the town and the state is threefold, and designed to get towns what they need to thrive. Besides the benefits of the 17-town compact, she said, the state, for instance, is sending Great Barrington expertise from Mass IT “to get us off the ground for downtown to be wired with high speed broadband, and to work on some other public/private partnerships for economic development.”
“It’s critical to get assistance from those agencies in the Commonwealth,” she added. “We’re small.”
“We’re trying to remove red tape for local governments,” Baker said. The executive order, he added, will return towns to “freedom and flexibility.” He said his administration “will be there to help you along the way.”
Baker, who was relaxed and made a selfie prank with Pignatelli at the podium, noted that Massachusetts is a state of small towns; “251 towns have less than 20,000 people,” and “most of the work is done by leaders who live and work in small towns.”
The idea of the Compact, Pignatelli said, is to improve town and school services, provide tax relief, and still keep each town’s identity and sense of local control intact.
After speeches came the official signing, and booming laughter when Great Barrington Selectboard Chair Sean Stanton realized he needed to pass his baby off to someone in order to sign. Baker had the nearest set of hands, and into them she went.
It appeared Polito’s earlier speech had softened worry lines among the crowd. “This is not another unfunded mandate,” she said. “It comes with resources.”
