Dr. David Hopson
I was quite surprised by the lack of understanding by local officials regarding Version 3.0 of the Gateway School District’s budget for this fiscal year (which started on July 1). The allegations of mismanagement of the district’s budget, especially given the openness of the deliberative budget process, the work done by administrative staff with the Gateway Towns Advisory Committee (GTAC), and the fact that the budget is considerably less than it was five years ago, appear to be substantially misplaced.
For those citizens not fully aware of the situation, let me attempt to cut through the assumptions by outlining the facts as I understand them. In a regularly scheduled meeting on June 26 the school committee adopted Version 3.0 of the budget as required by law. The discussion that evening centered around the changes from version 2.1 to 3.0 (a small decrease of less than a $1,000) and the fact that we would not have valid assessment figures until the joint House/Senate committee came out with a budget (at that point we were still forced to use the Governor’s budget figures from January). Under the law and regulations surrounding regional school budgets, the school committee adopts the budget and the district treasurer sets the towns’ assessments.
On July 3, the district was able to identify the Chapter 70 (state educational aid) and regional transportation amounts in the House/Senate budget. The district then used these state aid numbers to have the district treasurer determine town assessments and mail those letters out to town officials. Thus the only official notification of the assessments (the assessment letters), as required by law, went out to town officials within the 7 days allowed after school committee adoption of the budget. This gave town officials sufficient time (well over a month) to consider their next actions regarding the district budget, i.e., whether to post and hold a special town meeting to revote the budget.
On or about July 11, the Worthington Town Finance Committee questioned the budget and assessment process that was followed by the district essentially believing that the school committee had to have accurate state aid numbers before adopting a budget. This initiated a series of emails and phone calls between the school committee chair, district administrators, and the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. The result of all of this correspondence was that the DESE recommended that the school committee take a vote to confirm the assessment amounts based upon the budget that was adopted on June 26. DESE confirmed that the vote on June 26 was a valid vote adopting the budget and setting the legal time frame for the district treasurer to determine town assessments and for the towns to reconsider budget approval.
The school committee discussed the option of adopting the budget again on July 24 which would have given the district treasurer 7 days to mail out new assessment letters to the towns and have given towns an additional 45 days to hold town meetings if so desired. However, the basic fact which was brought up several times during the meeting was that the assessment letters would be identical to those mailed on July 3, i.e., the budget did not change and the official assessments did not change, only the time allowed for town consideration would have changed. This would basically have given the towns nearly two and a half months to vote on the district budget from its original adoption on June 26 and put the district into a difficult financial situation. These facts, no change in the budget or town assessments, having meet the legal requirements of notifying towns of their official assessments, and the fiscal difficulties of putting budget ratification off another 45 days, were what I believe the majority of the school committee considered when they voted to confirm the assessment amounts based upon their adoption of the budget on June 26.
Once again it is in the towns’ hands of whether they wish to ratify the 2013-2014 budget. Those towns having already approved the budget and having a decrease in their assessments don’t have to hold another town meeting. Those towns that failed to approve the budget at their annual town meetings had the opportunity to schedule a special town meeting to vote on approving the school budget (with the caveat that failure to hold a vote in 45 days from the school committee adopting the budget is an automatic approval of the budget).
