Dr. David Hopson
I’m grateful to Derrick Mason’s efforts on the finance committee, his attendance and participation in the Gateway Towns’ Advisory Committee (GTAC), and his attendance at several school committee meetings during the development of the 2013-2014 school budget. I also agree with several of Derrick’s comments in his recent letter to the editor including concerns over ‘unfunded mandates’ and the state’s failure to honor many critical funding commitments (regional transportation reimbursement easily comes to mind).
I am taken aback by several of the other statements he makes and will provide some basic facts before annual town meetings in May so that people can weigh perceptions against reality. As a basic outline, I use data from sources available to anyone: basic town financial data can be found on the Department of Revenue’s website and basic district financial data can be found in the district’s budgets. To come up with the information I’ll be sharing over the next few weeks, I simply took this data and compared it over time and to statements by Mr. Mason, something everyone can do if they wish. I’m also not going to look at individual towns, their budgets, their assessments to the Gateway District, or their financial reserves. I will instead look at the district as a whole, using averages for all seven towns. I use district averages because we are a district and if the school committee were to just create a budget based upon the lowest common denominator and build each year’s budget simply on a town’s assessment, they would not be considering the changes in minimum contributions required by the state (this year that one area alone accounts for a 6.24 percent increase for Huntington and an 18.85 percent decrease in Worthington) or changes in the percentage of children each town has in the district, which impact increases or decreases the above minimum and non-foundation town assessments. In short, even with no increase in the overall Gateway budget, some towns would still face an increase in assessments based upon these changes.
I’d like to start with Mr. Mason’s idea that the Gateway schools have a ‘hardened sense of “entitlement” to our tax dollars.’ The reality is that there is a certain entitlement with the budget set by state law called the minimum contribution. In addition, the non-foundation portion of the budget that covers debt and transportation could be considered an ‘entitlement’ as the towns already voted to approve the debt and the state requires that we transport students in a regional district. Again, I’m not absolutely sure of what Mr. Mason means as he’s never raised these objections in private or public sessions with school officials, but under the law we are obligated to educate students and provide a free and appropriate public education to all children.
The idea that our property tax burdens “are already intolerable” is one we often hear. However, as we compare our district towns’ tax burden to towns throughout the state, it’s easy to see that the burden is considerably less (in fact the average single family tax burden for Gateway towns is roughly in the bottom third of all towns in the state) and not growing as rapidly. For example, our average real estate tax for single family homes has increased by $75.14 from 2009 to 2013, an increase over 4 years of 2.43 percent, essentially much less than 1 percent a year and far under the rate of inflation and the 2.5 percent increase in tax revenues allowed under Proposition 2 1/2.
Related to this is that from 2009 to 2012, the average percentage that the Gateway District has assessed town budgets has decreased from 54.39 percent to 53.7 percent. The district’s total assessment to our towns has decreased 5.1 percent (or $486,448) and the district’s budget has decreased 8.75 percent (or $1,438,397) from 2009 to 2013. Thus, if the district’s assessments have decreased, the district’s budget has decreased, and the percentage of town budgets spent on Gateway decreased—but town property taxes have increased—the fault doesn’t fall on Gateway’s budget. In reality Gateway has absorbed the entire loss of state aid for education, an amount that equals $859,015, a decrease of 12.3 percent from FY’09 to FY’13.
I’ll be sharing this information with GTAC, the school committee, and placing the information on Gateway’s website as part of our commitment to providing budget information in an open and transparent process. In future columns I’ll address some of the other perceptions that Mr. Mason shared with the public.
