To the Editor:
The Berkshire Hills Regional School District’s Regional Agreement Amendment Committee (RAAC) is serving a useful role in focusing attention on what a Stockbridge member accurately characterized at last night’s meeting (May 10) as “the elephant in the room,” the assessment allocation issue. I am a member of RAAC, but the analysis below is my own.
We have spent time looking at examples of allocation formulas in use by other districts, but while it’s necessary to know what’s out there, I don’t believe that’s a productive focus going forward. As I argued in the paper that I distributed to RAAC and observers last night (The full text of my proposal appears at the end of this letter.), what counts is a framework that gets the District the money that it needs to survive and prosper, and the most efficient way to do that — maybe the only way — is a unified tax rate.
“Wait,” one might argue, “if a unified rate is so sensible, why don’t a lot of other school districts in Massachusetts use it, instead of mostly some variation of student headcount formulas?”
In practical effect, they do — overwhelmingly — but they get to that result unintentionally. Start with the fact that about 70 percent of all districts are NOT regional. Because there is only one local taxing authority in places like Boston, Pittsfield, Lee, and Lenox, all property owners in each of their school districts pay the same rate. For the remaining 30 percent, it would be reasonable to assume that at least two-thirds of them are fairly homogeneous; that is, they have a roughly equal ratio of students to assessed property values in each of the constituent towns, in which case, even though the ALLOCATION FORMULA uses student headcount, it is also proportional to property values, and therefore the ALLOCATION RESULT is something that approximates a unified tax rate.
The reason that caused the RAAC to be formed in the first place, even if we have all been unconscious of it, is that the BHRSD contains towns with markedly different proportions of second homeowners, which causes their ratios of students to assessed property values to be different to an extreme that may only be equaled by a handful of other school districts in the entire state. That has caused our town tax rates to diverge substantially, and explains why only 40 percent of Great Barrington voters supported the high school renovations, whereas 66 percent of Stockbridge voters did so. Although some of the GB “nay” voters may have been motivated by a feeling of inequity, I believe that most of them were reacting to simple tax fatigue.
Unfortunately, without a policy that transitions the BHRSD to a unified tax rate, the divergence will only get greater, as new prospective South County second homeowners shun the relatively highly taxed town of GB in favor of the much lower taxed town of Stockbridge. After all, they still get all of the benefits of living in a highly-rated school district, but at a substantial discount.
This is the challenge for ALL of the citizens of the Berkshire Hills community, not just the RAAC: to work through the democratic process with good will and open minds — and respectful conflict — to achieve a robustly funded school district.
Chip Elitzer
Great Barrington
PROPOSITIONS FOR CONSIDERATION BY MY FELLOW RAAC MEMBERS:
That we stop focusing on “fairness” – not because it isn’t an important value, but because it has become clear after several RAAC meetings that it has different practical meanings for our various members and has become a divisive framework in our attempt to work together for the common good of our District.
That we focus instead on our most meaningful task: putting in place a financial framework to assure the continued excellence of our local K-12 education.
That the solution lies in figuring out the most efficient way to raise revenue, not in cutting expenses. Without a path to greater revenue each year, we will be faced with annual cuts in teaching positions and programs.
That a unified tax rate to support the District budget is the most efficient way to raise revenue, because any discount to that rate for any property owners in our District is revenue foregone.
I understand that my previous proposal along these lines was defeated, at least in part, by the reluctance of most of our committee members to raise Stockbridge citizens’ taxes so that Great Barrington and West Stockbridge citizens could reduce theirs. The perception was that this proposal was about implementing my idea of tax fairness at the expense of a minority, and not about the greater good of the District.
I would like to remedy this objection by proposing the following modification:
Each future fiscal year, GB and WS will pay THE GREATER OF (a) what they will pay in FY17, or (b) the unified District tax rate; and Stockbridge will pay THE LESSER OF (a) the unified District tax rate, or (b) the total assessment to the three towns minus the assessments to GB and WS.
With no increase in the District budget in future years, this formula would yield the same apportionment that is already scheduled for FY17: $14.5 million for GB, $3.0 million for WS, and $3.0 million for Stockbridge. Inevitably, however, the budget will increase, and for a few years, that increase would be borne by Stockbridge taxpayers. Eventually, budget increases will reach the point where they would be shared by WS taxpayers, because the unified rate amount will be greater than the $3.0 million they will pay in FY17. For a further number of years, GB taxpayers would continue to pay $14.5 million, because that will still be higher than the unified rate then being paid by Stockbridge and WS, but eventually (Year X) District budget increases would cause the unified rate calculation to kick in for GB as well, because it will yield a result greater than $14.5 million. That Year X and every year thereafter (unless a future District budget improbably decreases below the Year X total), all the taxpayers in the District would be paying the same rate.
At that time, optimum tax efficiency would have been achieved, and the District’s financial future would have been assured. Also, there would no longer be any financial issue dividing the three towns, and we would have perfected the union that our predecessors created over fifty years ago.
Respectfully submitted May 10, 2016, by Chip Elitzer
