Lanesborough Not Done Voting Yet
 Mount Greylock Regional High School Co-Principal Tim Payne listens to Bill Stevens, the Lanesborough's finance committee chairman, during Tuesday night's school committee meeting. |
Lanesborough's rejection of the debt-exclusions, which would've helped pay the bond issued in order to make repairs at Mount Greylock Regional High School, does not nullify Williamstown's passing of two debt exclusions last month. The bond has already been issued — after being approved by each town's Selectmen — and the towns' methods of collecting the appropriate funds to pay it off are not contingent on each other.
What is contingent, however, are the towns' assessments to the Mount Greylock Regional High School. On June 8, Lanesborough voters passed the school budget recommended by the Finance Committee, which is $60,000 less than the $2,562,839 that the School Committee had requested.
Because of the district agreement, which states that one town can't pay its full assessment if the other does not, the school budget will be about $150,000 short. On Tuesday night, the school committee voted 6-1 to send the original request back to Lanesborough for another vote.
"I don't feel guilty about making the request that I made because for the last two years we've been hard on Lanesborough, for the two prior years we've been hard on Williamstown," School Committee Chairman David Archibald said. "We're always limited by the poorer town in terms of population increase and state-minimum contributions.
"I don't see that we should back off on our request."
Committee member David Langston refuted an argument — which was raised by Lanesborough resident and Greylock teacher Larry Bell during town meeting — that Mount Greylock will find $150,000 somewhere in the budget to cover expenses. If Lanesborough doesn't meet the school committee's request, Langston said it will be the children who suffer.
"Our children are the future," he said. "They are not mowing the lawn in the cemetery or fixing a bunch of potholes. They are the future.
"If the budgetary picture works out the way it's looking like, we're going to have even more layoffs [at Mount Greylock] or reductions enforced at one time or another."
Committee member Ronald Tinkham was the lone naye vote on sending the original school budget back to Lanesborough.
The town of Lanesborough has 45 days — beginning this past Tuesday — to hold another meeting. If voters again pass a budget that's short, the school committee will then have the option to accept the deficit or to organize a district meeting, which would bring both towns together for a majority-rules vote.
The quandary for Lanesborough — with the bond payment and a potential increase in its school assessment — is how they will find the money. After last week's town meeting, the overall budget was passed just about $3,330 under the levy limit. And this past Tuesday night, the town voted down a tax override ballot question, which would have raised an extra $150,000 to put into the operating budget.
The town can take money from its stabilization fund, but Finance Committee Chairman Bill Stevens is strongly against it.
"Stabilization fund is set aside for capital expenditures; to buy new graders, to buy new trucks, to put new buildings up," he said. "It's not to put into operating expenses. It's fiscal irresponsibility to use the stabilization fund for operating money."
Stevens also expressed his displeasure with the amount of voters who turned out for Lanesborough's town meeting on June 8.
"I think it's disgraceful that we've got a town with 1,100 voters and about 180 people show up," he said.
He said that in the case of a special town meeting, he expects the turnout will be smaller.
