In a previous column dated December 5th (and still available on the district website), I looked at the potential changes in town assessments for the 2017-2018 budget year based upon the number of students sent by each town and the required minimum contribution as set by the state. This showed that changes in town assessments do not necessarily correspond to changes in the school district’s budget, i.e., the budget could remain level but some towns would see increases in their assessments while others would see decreases.
There are currently two ways to calculate town assessments, or the share each town pays to Gateway. One is the statutory method (which we’ve used since it started) and the other is based upon Gateway’s regional agreement. The statutory method uses the state’s minimum contribution amount for the foundation assessment and then uses the percentage of students enrolled for the above minimum and non-foundation budget amounts. In the regional agreement, the entire amount of town assessments would be based upon the percentage of students enrolled, with the caveat that the total assessment any town paid could not be below the state’s calculation of their minimum contribution. The assessment method outlined in the regional agreement would likely make the swings in town contributions even greater than they have been under the statutory method.
The school committee, GTAC, and the district administration have also been looking at a third way to set town assessments: using a five-year rolling average of the percentage of students enrolled from each town. By doing this, the swings in annual town assessments would level out eliminating much of the difficulty our member towns face in meeting their district assessment, even when the budget stays level or decreases.
This third method came up for discussion at a recent meeting with the Blandford finance committee and the chair of the Huntington finance committee as a potential solution to the difficulties some towns face when their district assessment increases dramatically from year to year. As pointed out by the Huntington representative, town tax rates are increasingly different in our member towns based upon overall budgets and the total value of property in each town. By moving to a five-year rolling average, towns may find their tax rates stabilizing, at least as they relate to the school district assessments.
Using any assessment method other than the statutory requires unanimous agreement from all member towns every year, while passing the budget requires a positive vote from only four of the six towns. Technically, a five-year rolling average should be in the regional agreement before it can be implemented, but an agreement by the six towns for using this might not be challenged by the state. It’s true that getting six towns to agree to a five-year rolling average when potentially four of the six towns could pay slightly more than they would under the statutory method might be difficult to achieve, but the Blandford finance committee (Blandford being one of the towns that most likely would pay more under the five-year averaging method rather than the statutory method) indicated that this was worthwhile to pursue. This may be an item that the towns should consider and we can start that conversation with the towns through the Gateway Towns Advisory Committee (GTAC) as we begin discussions surrounding the 2017-2018 district budget.
