Dr. David Hopson
At their June 26 meeting, the Gateway Regional School Committee adopted Version 3.0 of the 2013-14 budget. This version keeps all of the services that were funded in Version 2.1 (the one that towns voted on at their Annual Town Meeting) but has been updated to reflect costs that are now known (vs. estimated costs last March).
As with many local officials, I find the delay in getting a state budget passed and approved in a timely fashion to be difficult to understand and very frustrating. One would hope that given the same time limits each year, the same process each year, and the knowledge that waiting until the last minute only stymies local officials, our legislators and governor would get a budget in place well before the end of the fiscal year (June 30). Of course the longer they wait, the more accurate the revenue projections, but given that they can (and often do) pass supplemental budgets, is this a reason to put each town, city, and regional school district in limbo for highway and educational funding?
In our corner of the Commonwealth, Chester became the third town to vote against the Gateway budget. Did they do this because the budget was not to their liking? No, the Finance Committee recommended the budget and even the Selectboard indicated that the budget wasn’t the problem. Rather, the Selectboard wanted to know what state aid for education and regional transportation would be, as this impacts their assessment for the district.
Consider that the Governor’s version of the budget came out in late January (as it does every year and upon which the district develops the first budget and town assessments), the House budget comes out in late April/early May, and the Senate budget comes out in mid to late May. A conference committee then meets to develop a joint House/Senate budget for eventual passage, which is moved to the Governor for his review and signature. While I don’t know all of the details of the differences between the House and Senate budgets, most years (as with this year) I’m told there aren’t significant differences and that it shouldn’t take long to develop a conference budget. Yet, despite the fact that Regional School Districts are required by law to come up with budgets 45 days before their first town meeting (meaning that Gateway has to have a projected budget done in mid-March) we often wait for the state until late June or early July—and sometimes even later. In fact, this year the state passed an emergency appropriations bill before they passed the budget just in case the fiscal year ended before a regular budget was adopted and signed into law. In some years, the legislature has taken the initiative to set educational aid separately from the overall budget so that school districts could use this number to establish town assessments, thus avoiding the issue that the Town of Chester has this year.
You could say that the reason the district doesn’t have a budget for next fiscal year (which begins July 1) is due to the state’s inability to get their budget done in a timely fashion to help cities and towns. Thus the district had to request a 1/12th budget from the Commissioner of Education so we can continue paying bills and operating the district. Thankfully the law provides for this option and allows the Commissioner to set a 1/12th budget that is “not less than 1/12th of the total budget approved by the region in the most recent fiscal year.” As superintendent, I requested a 1/12th budget based upon the most recently school committee approved FY’14 budget, thus hoping to eliminate the need to lay off staff and to be able to move forward with replacing staff who are not returning next year. However, at the time I’m writing this article, we still have no news from DESE regarding a 1/12th budget for the district and we’re told that the conference committee may complete their work within a day or two. I’m hoping to hear soon from both the Commissioner and the DOR regarding the information that Gateway needs to move forward with running the district and determining new town assessment numbers, now that the School Committee has adopted version 3.0 of the FY’14 budget.
