Great Barrington
Great Barrington and Sheffield taxpayers should be natural allies. For more than 50 years they have paid crushing levels of local property taxes that have subsidized – dollar for dollar – the much lower tax rates of their neighboring towns. In fiscal year 2023, Sheffield’s rate was $11.52 per $1,000 of assessed valuation, of which $10.17 (88 percent) was used to pay its SBRSD assessment. GB’s rate was $14.07, of which $11.20 (80 percent) was used to pay its BHRSD assessment. At the other extreme, Alford’s rate was $5.00, of which $1.50 (30 percent) was used to pay its SBRSD assessment, and Stockbridge’s rate was $8.14, of which $3.63 (45 percent) was used to pay its BHRSD assessment.
If one could wave a magic wand and have all taxpayers within our school districts pay the same rate (which is the case for the 84 percent of registered voters in the Commonwealth who do not live in regional school districts), Sheffield taxpayers would save almost $4 million in FY 2024, and GB taxpayers would save almost $6 million. That $10 million combined “overpayment” is an ANNUAL burden that continues to grow larger with each passing year.
Absent a magic wand, why don’t the voters in the SBRSD and the BHRSD amend their district operating agreements to transition to a single school tax rate within each district? Because any amendment to the operating agreements must be ratified by all the towns within each district. None of the town meetings in the other four towns of the SBRSD would approve changing a formula that keeps their school tax rates at a small fraction of the rate paid by Sheffield taxpayers. Similarly, the Stockbridge town meeting wouldn’t approve changing the current BHRSD agreement that causes GB taxpayers to pay a school tax rate that is 3.5 times higher than theirs. (West Stockbridge, however, is a natural ally with GB and Sheffield. In FY 2023, 74 percent of its property taxes went to pay the BHRSD assessment.)
There is only one possible path forward, and it is a narrow one. Together, Sheffield, GB, and West Stockbridge have a critical mass of voters: 63.5 percent of the registered voters in the eight towns of the two existing school districts. Their town meetings could vote to form a new school district with an allocation formula based strictly on property values, not student headcount, which would effectively mean a single school tax rate.
Yes, I know that the Sheffield town meeting just overwhelmingly defeated the proposed merger of the two districts. However, to repeat the mantra of Bill Clinton’s campaign, “IT’S THE ECONOMY, STUPID!” Regardless of your position on the merits of the old merger agreement, it perpetuated the grossly inequitable tax formula of the existing regional districts, and the new merger proposal would create a clear pathway to save Sheffield, GB, and West Stockbridge taxpayers AT LEAST $10 MILLION ANNUALLY.
What about the other five towns? They could refuse to let our three towns secede from their existing school districts, but then they would have to justify their actions based on naked self-interest, since there isn’t a single valid argument to support the existing tax formula (see The Case for Regional School District Tax Reform). As a practical matter, they would probably eventually join our three towns to form an 8-town district, because what other choice would they have? We could make it clear that if they wanted tuition-in agreements for their students, the rate they would pay would be at least as expensive as if they simply joined the new district. To be clear, the transition to a single rate would be gradual: the three overpaying towns would not pay less than they did before, but the currently underpaying towns would pick up the tab for all increases in the school budget until such time as all towns were paying the single rate. (With 5 percent inflation, it would take 12 years based on the combined FY 2024 budgets of SBRSD and BHRSD.)
Citizens of Sheffield, the fate of my proposal – and your pocketbooks – is squarely in your hands. GB approved the previous 8-Town merger agreement even with its deeply flawed financing formula. They would approve the new one with virtual unanimity. You defeated the old merger proposal by a 5-to-1 margin, but I am hoping that a chance to escape a generational legacy of crushing taxation would reverse that result.
I suggest that one or a small group of Sheffield voters circulate a petition to call another special town meeting to vote on a warrant article to this effect: “To see if the Town will vote to endorse the creation with Great Barrington, and any other towns seeking to join, a new regional school district having a multi-year transition to a single district-wide tax rate.” I would further suggest that getting, say, 300 signatures (a clear majority of those who previously voted against the merger) should be sufficient evidence that such a town meeting should be held.
If that town meeting vote goes as I expect, a revised 8-Town merger agreement would be submitted to all the towns. Those results would be expected to include some deliciously ironic reversals: Stockbridge and Alford would vote against the merger, and Sheffield would vote in favor. Then the politics of the new reality would sink in, and eventually the other five towns would join as well.
