Great Barrington — The Selectboard and Finance Committee held their fifth budget planning meeting at Town Hall on Tuesday, February 28. A public hearing on the proposed fiscal 2025 town budget was held as part of the meeting.
At the beginning of the town’s budget process on February 6, Town Manager Mark Pruhenski originally recommended a budget of about $46.1 million for fiscal 2025. As of February 20, however, after a series of meetings throughout the month, the Selectboard and Finance Committee recommended a budget of about $47 million for fiscal 2025.
Before the joint meeting on February 28, Pruhenski recommended a budget of about $46.8 million.
At the February 28 meeting, only three members of the five-member Finance Committee were present: Chair Philip Orenstein, Vice Chair Anne O’Dwyer, and member Richard Geiler. This brought about a procedural question by resident Michelle Loubert.
She said that, at a previous budget meeting on February 7, Chair Orenstein said he would recuse himself when it came time to vote on budget issues regarding affordable housing. While Selectboard Vice Chair Leigh Davis said she would recuse herself from voting on budget issues regarding affordable housing at past Community Preservation Act (CPA) meetings.
Orenstein is the interim executive director for the Community Development Corporation South Berkshire, and Davis is the communications and community engagement director for Construct Inc.
While Davis did not answer Loubert, Orenstein at first replied that he would recuse himself.
“If you do, we won’t have a quorum [for the Finance Committee],” Selectboard Chair Stephen Bannon said. “It’s up to you, but if you do, we will have to have another meeting.”
“I’m just reflecting on your [previous] statement],” Loubert told Orenstein. “In fact, I reflected on your statement during [previous] citizen’s comments saying that I suspected a conflict of interest to be present.”
“Reflecting on the fact that there are three [committee members] tonight, I cannot immediately recall exactly if we’ll have a vote tonight that affects affordable housing,” Orenstein said. “But if we do, I may end up reconsidering that. I don’t know, but my intention was to recuse myself.”
Right before the hearing, Pruhenski told the audience that “this year it was difficult to maintain services and staffing levels while keeping the impact on taxpayers in check” in compiling the proposed fiscal 2025 budget. “This year we have had significant increases in fixed costs, and that has been our biggest challenge,” Pruhenski said. “To be as careful and conservative as we possibly can with state revenues coming in below benchmarks at this time, [municipal] staff is not recommending any further increases in budget lines during this budget process.”
Pruhenski said that a total of $452,000 in reductions was made by staff in the proposed budget.
At the beginning of the public comment portion of the hearing, resident Sharon Gregory said that the town still needed to reduce the proposed budget even further, especially in the capital expenditures area. “You are hollowing out our middle-class population by our higher taxes, and many of you know that,” Gregory said. “The median homeowner in Great Barrington now pays over $6,000 per year [in taxes]. I also know our [Department of Public Works] Chair Joe Aberdale has pressed upon our town how much deferred maintenance [in infrastructure] the town has built up. You should look to maintain our old town buildings—many of them are historical and critical.”
Resident Christophe Pichard said that he is concerned about the continuing increases in property taxes. “I would like to know if there is some control of the tax increases,” Pichard said. “Unfortunately, I’m getting old, and I hope I’m the only one, but I’m discovering retirement, and I see the decrease of my income on one side, and on the other side, I see an increase in my real estate taxes. And I’m just wondering if there is some sort of cap or some sort of way of managing the increase, or am I going to have less and less money coming in and more and more coming out?”
“I hope you see that during this meeting where you are trying really hard to put some controls on it,” Finance Committee Vice Chair O’Dwyer told Pichard in response. “Speaking for myself, this year seeing where we’re at in terms of the increases that we just can’t do anything about for the coming year, I think it’s on all our minds to look to the future where we can put more controls on [the budget].”
Housatonic resident James Bailey criticized both boards in their decision-making process concerning the proposed budget. “I’m not sure if any of you are aware of this, but on a daily basis in Great Barrington, Housatonic, families make tough decisions financially every day to survive,” Bailey said. “Think about that when you think about the budget. It’s extremely alarming to me as a veteran that one of the first cuts to be considered was veterans [services]. That’s offensive to me.” (Bailey was referring to a previous meeting on February 20 during which Pruhenski proposed cutting the American Legion Lease for Veterans’ Affairs line item by $23,000, and the VFW Hall Lease line item by $21,600.)
Bailey went on to say that Town Planner Christopher Rembold has requested $750,000 in funding for a project involving the former Alden property. The Selectboard approved the 7.25-acre property last March to become an affordable housing project of 20 units as developed by Central Berkshire Habitat for Humanity. “[He made the request] because we were lied to that the project was going to be funded through state grants,” Bailey said. “You’ve got neighbors in that community struggling to pay their taxes, and you want to take $750,000 when you’re arguing over $700 [per month] that [VFW Post 8348 Quartermaster Richard Zucco] had requested? You should be ashamed of yourselves that you would even consider not giving veterans what they request. These are men and women who were willing to give their lives so you as the board could sit there and make decisions for us.”
Neither members of the Selectboard or Finance Committee responded to Bailey’s comments.
The public hearing was closed after 40 minutes, and the remainder of the meeting, which lasted for another two hours, consisted of members of both boards reviewing department budgets and making cuts to certain budget line items.
Towards the end of the meeting when The Berkshire Edge asked what the new bottom line was for the proposed budget, and how much was cut from the budget in total by both the Selectboard and Finance Committee, Selectboard Chair Bannon said. “We have no idea. There’s no way we would know that right now. We don’t have a spreadsheet running. It’s going to take days to figure this out.”
