The public hearing for Gateway’s FY 2017 Budget will be held on Wednesday, March 2 beginning at 7 p.m. in the Gateway Performing Arts Center. At this time, input from the public and our member towns will be heard by the school committee and administration. The school committee will then meet on Wednesday, March 9 to potentially adopt a budget to move forward for town ratification at annual town meetings. Under the regional agreement, the school committee needs to adopt a budget at least 45 days before the first annual town meeting. As in years past, this timeframe means that towns are voting for a budget, and related assessments, before the state budget is set, meaning that it is possible for town assessments to be reduced after the town meetings if additional financial aid is provided to the district through either Chapter 70 or regional transportation reimbursement (or for that matter additional Cherry Sheet aid to the towns). Under statute, any additional Chapter 70 funding must be used to offset town assessments and over the past several years, the school committee has also used any additional transportation reimbursement to lower town assessments.
Remember that the assessments provided at this point are based upon the January 1st student census and that the final assessments must be based upon the March 1st census. This means that there may be some adjustments to town assessment figures by the time the school committee adopts a budget to send to the towns. We are not currently forecasting any reductions in state aid and are therefore comfortable with the idea that the 2.11 percent increase in overall assessments will not go higher as we move forward with the budget process.
In looking back over the last ten years of town expenditures (available on the DOR’s website) I see an average increase in our six towns’ expenditures for town services (not counting educational costs) of 2.3 percent with a low of 1.6 percent in Montgomery and highs of 2.8 percent for Blandford and Middlefield. This is significantly different than the change in the Gateway budget, which has seen a decline of $1,501,669, or 8.6 percent, over the past ten years. Despite this significant difference in town and school spending, and the reality that educational costs are much less for our towns than if they would be if they’d increased at the 2.5 percent ‘allowable’ rate under Proposition 2 ½, the schools are still being asked to further reduce expenditures by some town officials. The determination of whether this is a reasonable request, and based upon the impact of further reductions on student services inherent in meeting such a request, the school committee will be required to determine the final budget to operate the school system in a manner that meets their goals for the district and its students. Each of us will, based upon our own situation, needs, and outlook, make a decision on whether we will support budget requests for towns and the school district and more importantly, whether we as individuals will attend town meetings to make our choices known. After all, just a handful of individuals at some town meetings last year made a difference in the outcomes of several votes, demonstrating the impact that just a few people can make in our open town meeting form of government. In any case, I hope that all towns continue to make their budget process as open and complete as does Gateway.
