Much acrimony, little progress in revising 3-town Berkshire Hills School District pact

The impasse is seemingly simple: Great Barrington wants its taxes lowered, and Stockbridge and West Stockbridge don’t want theirs to go up.

Stockbridge — It was an evening of high temper over spreadsheet errors, talking over one another, pointed, melodramatic exits and a few slammed doors.

It was a meeting of the Regional Agreement Amendment Committee (RAAC), set up to explore ways to share costs more evenly among the three towns in the Berkshire Hills Regional School District. The committee and its members are facing a set of frustrating limitations as the drama reveals its simplicity: Great Barrington wants its taxes lowered, and Stockbridge and West Stockbridge don’t want theirs to go up.

The Regional Agreement Amendment Committee convenes in the Berkshire Hills Regional School District meeting room in the former Plain School. Photo: Heather Bellow
The Regional Agreement Amendment Committee convenes in the Berkshire Hills Regional School District meeting room in the former Plain School. Photo: Heather Bellow

Nerves were raw Tuesday (June 21) night as it became clear that any changes that require Stockbridge to pay more for the schools will continue to be met with resistance.

School financial consultant Mark Abrahams was back to present several models that may help Great Barrington. One would lower the town’s school transportation costs; another would help with future capital costs. Another would help the town by changing the way the three towns pay overall, with 90 percent from student headcount, and 10 percent from property values, with an overall estimated savings of around $200,000. (The Edge was unable to obtain an updated copy of the different options on Wednesday, but will publish them when available.)

Several RAAC members didn’t think these new formulas would make a real dent in what many feel is an unfair allocation of the district’s $25 million budget: 70 percent from Great Barrington, and 15 percent each from Stockbridge and West Stockbridge. Some want towns charged by each town’s property values rather than by student numbers.

“There’s still a huge lack of revenue,” said RAAC member and Great Barrington Selectboard member Dan Bailly. “Voters in Great Barrington would see [those options] just as a token.”

Yet those models might be all Stockbridge and West Stockbridge would be willing to stomach.

It wasn’t an easy night in district offices, packed with RAAC members and other interested parties, including two members of the Green Tea Party (GTP), an activist group from Great Barrington hell bent on tackling issues that its members think are thwarting the town’s economic development because of high property taxes.

The discussion kept winding back to the same theme.

“Why,” asked RAAC joint chairperson Mark Sprague of Stockbridge, “is it so difficult for Great Barrington to accept the way the overwhelming majority [of districts] does it?” Sprague was referring to using student headcounts to determine how much a town pays. “We’re sitting here because Great Barrington thinks it isn’t fair. Why the perception that this is so unfair?”

RAAC and school committee member Richard Dohoney, of Great Barrington, explained. “It is an anomaly that you have a 3-town district that is so unevenly weighted on population breakdown.” He also said the district’s policies to bring in students from outlying districts adds to the complexity of the financial problem.

From left, Richard Dohoney, Bronley Boyd, Jay Bikowfsky, BHRSD Business Manager Sharon Harrison at the RAAC table. Photo: Heather Bellow
From left, Richard Dohoney, Bronley Boyd, Jay Bikowfsky, BHRSD Business Manager Sharon Harrison at the RAAC table. Photo: Heather Bellow

Dohoney further said the town has “a polarized economic spectrum…rich and poor,” and “a lot of political problems” as a result. He said there “are a lot of smart people” in town who have looked at the cost spread and think “it’s screwed up.”

It all started with the town, two years in a row, voting down renovation plans for 50-year-old Monument Mountain Regional High School. In 2014 it was a controversy that divided the town — somewhat down economic lines — and pitted friends against friends. It was a storm that, in part, gave birth to RAAC, as a way to get Great Barrington to vote yes on a badly needed future renovation.

“It’s a mess,” Dohoney said of RAAC’s task here, and the need for a new high school. “No one is naive as to what a long slog we’re entering.”

Great Barrington voted down the school budget at Annual Town Meeting last month in an attempt to gain traction with the towns of Stockbridge and West Stockbridge on the issue.

But opposition to shuffling costs around to help out Great Barrington is still met with disdain by some.

“There are some arguments to be made that Great Barrington doesn’t pay enough,” said West Stockbridge RAAC member Alan Thiel. He pointed to the town’s high, triple A rating by Standard & Poor that measures a town’s worthiness for bonding. Thiel further said there was “nothing about the percentage formulas that bothers me,” and added he wished RAAC member Judge Frederic Rutberg of Stockbridge was present to rekindle his motion to keep everything the way it is.

It was at this moment GTP members Bobby Houston and Ron Blumenthal made a sharp exit. And former Great Barrington Finance Committee chairperson Sharon Gregory left in a huff soon after when Thiel suggested Great Barrington solve some of its problems with a residential property tax exemption, suggested last year by Finance Committee Chair Michael Wise. That proposal would have raised property taxes on homes with higher values, and lowered them significantly for those in a lower value range.

RAAC representatives Chip Elitzer of Great Barrington and Dan Weston of Stockbridge. Photo: Heather Bellow
RAAC representatives Chip Elitzer of Great Barrington and Dan Weston of Stockbridge. Photo: Heather Bellow

RAAC committee member and Stockbridge resident Dan Weston said perhaps Stockbridge should be asked how much they’d be willing to pony up, then “back our way into a formula that meets that capacity.”

RAAC member Bronley Boyd, of Stockbridge, wanted to know why Stockbridge should “pay more when the population is declining and has [a low] number of students in the system. It’s a very difficult sell.”

Boyd suggested asking Great Barrington what its “bottom number” was, one that would “get your Green Tea Party on board. How far are you gonna come down?”

He further said “consolidation” should be in play here for “strategic planning.”

“We all fork over more money, or we look at more students,” he said. “Seems we’re gonna sit here for months on end fighting with each other, and Stockbridge will pay a little, and Great Barrington will say it’s not enough.”

Superintendent Peter Dillon said indeed, an education task force along with Berkshire Regional Planning Commission is running numbers on how South County high school students might be reconfigured, since none of area’s four high schools are at capacity. “There are four high schools,” Dillon said, “and there could easily be two.”

Monument High, for instance, has 550 students, but capacity for 700.

School committee chair Steve Bannon pointed out that consolidation is not “necessarily going to be a panacea where all our taxes are going to go down.” He said those numbers have been studied, and it’s complicated.

Dan Weston also pointed out that other local districts, like Mt. Everett, just borrowed millions for improvements to their high school buildings, and aren’t about to abandon ship anytime soon.

The maze of unpopular choices and potential impasses led to talk of “incremental” changes and the idea of lobbing some decisions over to the school committee.

Michael Wise said he didn’t think “kicking it to the school committee” was part of his responsibility. He said he thought a way forward might be a combination of “modifying our funding method, modifying our governance structure” to allow other districts to easily merge into Berkshire Hills.

“We should take this seriously,” he said, “and act as though what we’re doing is going to be the agreement.”

RAAC member Chip Elitzer, of Great Barrington, spoke for the first time in several RAAC meetings. He had floated a proposal early on for a “unified [funding] rate,” voted down by the committee. Last night, he said “only in New England do we have something other than one district, one rate.” He has said again and again that Stockbridge is getting a “discount” that “leaves money on the table.” He says a unified rate would generate more money for a district that finds itself short every year.

RAAC co-chair and school committee member Bill Fields said Elitzer might be right in the long term, but something, he said, has to be done in the short term because “Great Barrington won’t vote for a [new] high school unless changes are made to this agreement.”

He suggested using the transportation method for savings. Dohoney suggested working through the model that has towns equally sharing capital costs with a new high school in mind. It reminded everyone that a renovation to Monument High is still held hostage, in part, to whether changes are made to the agreement.

“With the [high] school as a hook you could offer something,” said Jon Piasecki of West Stockbridge, whose wife Kristin is a RAAC member. “Because if we don’t have that [new high] school, our population will decline, there will be no more Harvard grads educating their kids there, and you’re gonna get more old people who die.”

Wise said the group, at their next meeting in August, should have something “concrete” on the table.

“We need to start making sausage,” Dohoney said.