Lanesborough Budget $60,000 Short For Mount Greylock
 Mount Greylock Superintendent William Travis appeals to Lanesborough voters on Tuesday night. |
Lanesborough voters passed its fiscal year 2011 budget during Tuesday night’s town meeting, including its monetary assessment to Mount Greylock, which is $60,000 shy of the School Committee’s requested amount.
Fastened by the terms of the regional school district agreement, Lanesborough’s vote eliminates $90,000 from Williamstown’s contribution to the school and results in an overall deficit of $150,000.
The School Committee can either accept the shortfall, which will reportedly lead to cuts in various departments, or it can arrange a district meeting for another vote.
“This is not the end of the story,” Lanesborough Town Administrator Paul Boudreau said. “The Greylock School Committee can go back and decide that they’re going to hold a district meeting where all the voters from Lanesborough and all the voters from Williamstown can vote on the budget.
“There’s a lot more people in Williamstown than there are in Lanesborough, so that $60,000 could get voted on, and we’re bound by it.”
Before Tuesday’s vote, Mount Greylock Superintendent William D. Travis urged Lanesborough to meet the School Committee’s original request of $2,562,839. Because of a significant cut in state aid, specifically in the areas of transportation, special education and employee benefits, Travis said it’s vital that the towns make up the difference.
 More than 170 voters showed up for Lanesborough's annual town meeting on Tuesday night at the elementary school. |
Larry Bell, a Lanesborough voter and Mount Greylock science teacher, came to the defense of the Finance Committee’s recommended amount. He said that the school has found ways, in the past, to spend money that wasn’t originally budgeted, for expenses including new computers and new hires.
Bell raised concerns that “you don’t always get the whole story at the budget meetings.”
“I’ve been told that I’m not a team player for doing this tonight,” Bell said. “I think our Finance Committee’s recommendation is more fair, from what I see on the inside, than the request to increase the school budget by the Mount Greylock School Committee.”
In the end, the motion to increase the budget by $60,000 was shot down by voters.
School Committee Chairman David Archibald said that if a district meeting doesn’t vote to fill the deficit, cuts could be made to custodians, AP courses, the library and science labs. The next school committee meeting is on Tuesday, June 15, at 7 p.m.
“I had heard it may go this way,” Archibald said of Lanesborough’s vote on the school budget. “We were hoping to present a case so that it wouldn’t go this way, but that’s democracy in action.”
About 170 voters showed up to Tuesday night’s meeting, which lasted nearly 4 ½ hours. More than half the meeting was spent discussing line items in the general government budget, which was amended from the original amount of $9,134,258 to $9,151,263. Voters made raises to the tree, recycling, senior citizen’s transportation and the recreation and athletic program accounts.
 Al Terranova can't bear to watch as voters discuss adding $3,000 to the recyclables account in the town budget. |
“If we keep on adding this stuff, I hope you’re all ready to vote next week for an override,” Terranova said. “There’s no point to increase a salary, then not to vote positively for an override next week. I just want to caution you about that.”
Lanesborough will hold its town elections next Tuesday from noon to 8 p.m. at town hall. There are five questions on the ballot, including two tax-exemption questions to fund repairs at Mount Greylock Regional High School, and an override question, asking voters whether or not to appropriate an additional $150,000 in real estate and personal property taxes to fund the operating budget.
By meeting’s end, after 27 articles were passed, including the transfer of $150,000 from the free cash account in order to reduce the tax rate, the budget was $3,392 under the levy limit, according to Finance Committee Chairman William Stevens.
Stevens said there is $86,270 left in free cash, and traditionally the town has had at least $100,000 in the account entering a new fiscal year.
“You shouldn’t use free cash for an operating budget,” Stevens said. “But that’s getting more and more difficult to do because the state is killing us with their lousy aid.”
