LANESBOROUGH, Mass. — A proposed survey of residents about the upcoming Mount Greylock Regional School building project has triggered heated debate across town government.

 

The latest is from Finance Committee members, who questioned the legality of using money from a revolving account set aside for regionalization studies to conduct it. 

 

"I say let the lawyer tell us if we can legally use it," committee member Steven Wentworth said. "Can we legally use those funds? That's the question."

 

Fellow member Ronald Tinkham said there is $7,800 left over from a prior grant inside a revolving account that he suggests taking to conduct the survey. The grant money was never spent on its intended purposes of the prior regionalization study because the Massachusetts Association of School Committees ultimately offered its consulting services for free. Tinkham and Town Manager Paul Sieloff say since the survey is also studying regionalization to some extent, the money should be used for the survey.

 

"The parameters are wide enough that that is a reasonable use of the funds," Sieloff said.

 

The town manager says he will run the question by legal counsel for an opinion before the Board of Selectmen authorize the survey at a special meeting on Wednesday.

 

Further, the committee was split in a discussion Monday night about conducting a survey at all. Finance Committee Chairman Al Terranova said he doesn't think the survey is fair.

 

"The least productive way to find out an opinion from 1,900 people is to send out a survey in which you have no controls over and a survey which is not set up in a statistical manner," Terranova said. "If you are going to collect data, you have to collect data in a reasonable and intelligent way."

 

The survey is eyed to be sent to all town voters asking to check one of three boxes: 

 

1) I urge the Selectmen to support the Mount Greylock project even though this project will have a noticeable effect on town property taxes because supporting education is important and also because a highly rated high school is good for the town and supports property values. 

 

2) I urge the Selectmen to try to keep taxes as low as reasonably possible even if that means not supporting the Mount Greylock Renovation project and perhaps even having Lanesborough students go to another high school — even if the school may not be as highly rated as Mount Greylock.

 

3) I support none of the above choices or I support another option that is not described above. Or, I have no strong opinion on this issue.

 

The survey is expected to be mailed out to every voter with a request to return it to the Board of Selectmen.

 

However, Terranova says there are "no controls" to assess who fills out the survey. He guesses less than 10 percent of voters will respond and it wouldn't be clear who those 10 percent are. He added there is also a question of the wording of the questions and responses as well.

 

Terranova's concerns are similar to those that school officials previously spoke about. Mount Greylock Regional School Committee member Richard Cohen previously said the wording pushes voters to one side of the issue and lacks detailed facts.

 

"It seems to be very unfair. It seems to have a introduction that was written by one side," Cohen told the Board of Selectmen on Dec. 22. "It is really impossible to have a fair survey when one side presents its opinions."

 

Cohen has even written to officials at Siena College in Albany, N.Y., from which Sieloff has proposed hiring a consultant. Sieloff said the consultant would be asked to review the survey to limit bias. Cohen wrote college officials asking them to "carefully consider what, if any, role it chooses to have in this process." 

 

In that letter, dated on Christmas Eve and addressed to Don Levy, director of the Siena Research Institute and Leslie Foster, business development manager, Cohen outlined his concerns with the survey saying it is flawed and would be "impossible" for the institute to make it credible.

 

"I believe — and I am not alone — that the Selectmen's survey is not intended for the kind of research purpose sanctioned by the AAPOR [American Association of Public Opinion Research], but rather it is intended to influence and indeed to circumvent and delegitimize the legal and legitimate plebiscite votes at town meetings and at the election booth. There are many reasons why this Selectmen's survey is widely viewed as undemocratic and unethical, in addition to the obvious problems with the research methodology," Cohen wrote.

 

Cohen's letter discusses the issues surrounding the survey, which is mostly centered on the upcoming votes for a debt exclusion for a renovation and new construction of the Mount Greylock Regional Middle and High School.

 

The Selectmen have been vocally concerned about the project costs and Cohen feels the survey — and an introductory letter — is written in a way that pushes voters against the project.

 

"I don't believe that SRI expertise in survey design can fix this fundamental research problem," Cohen wrote in his letter.

 

Sieloff, however, says while he understands concerns over the wording, if the results come back overwhelmingly to one side then it will be fruitful to the Board of Selectmen. 

 

"I don't have a problem sending out a survey to every resident in town, have the responses tabulated, and then giving the Board of Selectmen the results," Sieloff said.

 

Board of Selectman John Goerlach previously said the board has been "blocked" at every attempt to get a feel of what position the voters want the board to take. The survey is a chance to get direction, he said. Sieloff agrees with the benefits of using it.

 

"The Selectmen have a role. They are the peak of the pyramid of the elected officials in town. They have the ability to speak for the town. Right now they don't know the current of the town," Sieloff said on Monday.

 

The Board of Selectmen were split in a vote to move forward with the survey — a vote they will formalize on Wednesday. Finance Committee members Tinkham and Ray Jones both voiced in favor with using the survey.

 

However, Selectman Robert Ericson, who voted against the survey, said he would like to have it take place at a town meeting. On Monday, Terranova and Finance Committee member Christine Galib echoed that sentiment.

 

"The mechanism is called 'a town meeting,' " Terranova retorted to the argument of the survey being a way to gather input.

 

Sieloff said the discussion wasn't placed on the last special town meeting because he didn't want a "gigantic civil war" breaking out when the town "needed" to vote on the revised capital agreement for projects at Mount Greylock. 

 

Jones, meanwhile, says those who come to a town meeting are influenced by peer pressure when they see their friends and relatives voting a certain way. Additionally, he says town meeting voters often are uninformed about the issues when they go to vote.

 

"The average person really doesn't know what a debt exclusion really is," Jones said of the expected ballot vote next year to keep the construction costs of a new high school outside of Proposition 2 1/2.

 

Terranova and Wentworth both refuted that argument saying the boards do everything they can to inform voters ahead of time. There isn't much more they can do to create a better process.

 

"This is not a Lanesborough issue. It is a small-town issue," Terranova said.