Great Barrington — After yearly rising costs and frustration with the division of the Berkshire Regional School District’s $25 million budget among its three towns, Great Barrington voters shot the budget down last month in hopes of pressuring Stockbridge and West Stockbridge to divvy up the school pie differently, and get Great Barrington some relief.
Whether that will happen through the Regional Agreement Amendment Committee (RAAC) is still in question, but regardless, the school district still requires Great Barrington’s $14.5 million share to keep the schools operating, and Monday’s (June 13) Special Town Meeting was set up to do just that.
The 215 to 176 vote against the school budget at the May Annual Town Meeting shocked many residents, since it had been at least 20 years since one had been axed. But the last several years have seen insurance increases and reduced state aid to the schools, pulling the town’s taxes ever upward. Add to that Great Barrington’s 70 percent share of the school funding pie to Stockbridge and West Stockbridge’s 15 percent each, and the result is increasingly angry taxpayers. Each town pays based on how many of its students attend the district.
The perceived unfairness caused Great Barrington voters, for instance, to sink plans to renovate a deteriorating 50-year-old Monument Mountain Regional High school two years in a row.
It was a crisis that gave birth to RAAC. But a few hiccups at the committee have sowed doubts that it will result in a new regional agreement that takes each town’s share of the budget from property value assessments rather than enrollment rates.
RAAC member and Great Barrington resident Chip Elitzer brought a proposal to the committee that would do just that, and unify the rate gradually over a period of 20 years.
That proposal was shot down. “Dead on arrival,” Elitzer had earlier told the Edge.
And on the Annual Town Meeting floor, Elitzer said the town should vote down the school budget as a strategic move to gain leverage at RAAC, but to vote yes at the June 13 Special Town Meeting.
Elitzer had also proposed another item for a vote: state intervention to impose a unified tax rate among the three towns. But that was nixed by the Selectboard, with Chair Sean Stanton the only one in favor.
And the idea that officials at points east could change the three towns’ assessment formula was waved away by local Legislators, who say the state can’t take this kind of action for the benefit of one town or school district, and that the issue must be solved here.
Yet Elitzer said the school budget “should be passed unequivocally,” and “not be held hostage” to the unifed tax rate item. “Not having that other warrant article should not be used as a justification for voting down the school budget a second time.”
Elizer did say, however, that he wants to speak Monday night for “a chance to elaborate further on what we’re trying to achieve.”
Town Clerk Marie Ryan told the Edge at least 100 voters must show up to Special Town Meeting to make quorum.
And a no vote could spell trouble. Some are nervous.
“I’m always concerned until [the budget] passes,” said Berkshire Hills School Committee Chair Steve Bannon. “People could still decide that they don’t want to approve it.”
Bannon said in the event the budget fails again, yet another town meeting must be held, and “in the interim, the district could sue the town if they can’t pay their bill. If it’s not resolved, the state will step in.”
State interference in the running of the district could affect a budget that was painstakingly honed to keep programming intact this year, despite the 7 percent increase this year to Great Barrington.
“The real problem is, our schools need more funding, not less,” wrote Bobby Houston in an email. Houston is part of a local group, the Green Tea Party (GTP), that is focusing on the town’s economic issues and has encouraged voters to reject the budget. “For me, the ‘no’ vote on the school budget was a way of saying, ‘we need everybody to step up, not just Great Barrington’.”
Houston believes that last month’s “no” vote may still have purchase as negotiations continue monthly at the school district’s offices in Stockbridge. “I know the RAAC has said no once already,” Houston wrote, referring to a Stockbridge RAAC representative’s position that existing funding pie was just dandy. “But that was before the tax revolt in Great Barrington,” Houston continued. “Let’s revisit the real solution: One District, One Rate.”
Houston further said that the “net effect of one rate phased in over years is more money for our schools. Money to renovate Monument. Money to improve on something we already do well: free, quality public education for the kids in our district.
“At the RAAC,” Houston continued, “Stockbridge keeps pointing to the tuition model as ‘paying their fair share,’ but that is not how public education is funded in America: it’s funded by property taxes. People with more wealth pay more toward education; not people with more kids.”
It’s been rough going at RAAC, but the committee, made up of representatives from each town and the school committee, is soldiering on. And it appears Elitzer isn’t about to stop the long march towards taxpayer appeasement, however it has to happen, as Great Barrington residents complain of a crushing tax anvil that grows heavier each year in a town where most residents’ incomes can’t keep up.
“I haven’t given up on having other conversations,” Elitzer said. “I haven’t given up on RAAC, but [RAAC] doesn’t seem like a plausible endgame, just part of the conversation.”
Special Town Meeting will be held on Monday, June 13, 2016 at 6 p.m. in the Monument Mountain Regional High School auditorium
The next Regional Agreement Amendment Committee meeting will be held on Tuesday, June 21, 6 p.m. at the Berkshire Hills District Office in Stockbridge.
