WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Select Board on Monday voted to recommend May's town meeting approve most of the fiscal articles on the warrant.

 

The board decided to put off a decision on its recommendation for an article related to the sewer department, and the panel split on whether to support a series of appropriations of Community Preservation Act funds.

 

The fiscal articles, Nos. 3-17 on the warrant, relate to the operation of government and concern, mostly, how to spend money raised through property taxes in the fiscal year that begins on July 1.

 

The Select Board voted to support 14 of those articles on votes of 4-0 on Monday night.

 

The outlier was Article 14, a $10.6 million appropriation to fund "general government."

 

Randal Fippinger, who attended all of this winter's Finance Committee meetings to review the spending plan, was the minority vote in a 3-1 decision to recommend town meeting members pass the spending plan.

 

Fippinger said he disagreed with the Fin Comm's decision to either not fund or reduce funding for eight different non-profits that had sought town support in FY26.

 

He said he agreed with the concerns raised by a former Fin Comm member, Dan Caplinger, that the town's historic practice of supporting agencies like the Chamber of Commerce and Youth Center with property tax money might run afoul of the commonwealth's Anti-Aid Amendment.

 

But, Fippinger said, the town would benefit from targeted support to help the non-profits do their work even while looking for another path to fund such groups in the future.

 

"We keep talking about economic development … and the eight non-profits were talking about helping bring in tourist dollars or making the town a more attractive place to live," Fippinger said. "The amount of money we would have spent on this was a tiny fraction of the total budget.

 

"I think we're being penny-wise and pound foolish by not supporting the non-profits this year and finding another way to do it in the future."

 

Those comments related to the town's operational budget, which, as advanced by the Fin Comm, does include a $130,000 outlay to be split by the Williamstown Youth Center, Williamstown Chamber of Commerce and Williamstown Community Preschool.

 

A longer discussion, later at Monday's Select Board meeting, concerned the Community Preservation Act allocations.

 

There is no concern with the Anti-Aid Amendment there. The CPA is a law designed to allow municipalities to fund projects by, among others, 501(c)3 organizations.

 

Regular government expenses — funding K-12 education or the Department of Public Works, for example — are funded largely by property taxes. The rate of taxation ($13.80 per $1,000 of property value in Williamstown in the current fiscal year) is derived by distributing the tax levy (the total amount of expenditures approved by town meeting each spring) across the total value of all taxable property in town (about $1.5 billion in FY25). The tax rate rises and falls, as needed, to fund the levy.

 

The Community Preservation Act grants are funded by a 2 percent surcharge on property tax bills, with the first $100,000 of valuation exempted. For example, the median-priced home in Williamstown in FY25, with a value of $439,100, has a tax bill of $6,060. That same homeowner pays $93.50 in CPA surcharge (2 percent of what the tax bill would be on a $339,100 home).

 

Allocations of CPA funds in any given fiscal year have no impact on the amount raised under the surcharge, which is constant at 2 percent, the level adopted by residents in 2002. Any CPA funds raised but not spent carry forward to the next fiscal year.

 

Four members of the nine-person Finance Committee last week voted to recommend town meeting reject all seven of the CPA grants that the town's Community Preservation Committee voted to send the annual town meeting. And enough other members of the Fin Comm objected to three of the proposed grants to flip the Fin Comm's vote to a recommendation that those grants be turned down by the rest of the town.

 

On Monday, Matthew Neely voted against recommending town meeting approve those three grants. Jane Patton joined Neely in voting against CPA grants to help fund a mountain bike trail and a skate park, creating 2-2 votes on the Select Board.

 

Nate Budington, who serves on the CPC, attended meeting and said he was shocked by the votes on the Finance Committee and asked the Select Board members who sided against the CPC to explain their votes.

 

"Where did this overwhelming negative response come from," Budington asked from the floor of Monday's meeting. "The objections seemed to be about the process the [Community Preservation] committee used. We had a disagreement about the process. … It generated a plan that Polly [MacPherson] is leading to tighten the [CPC's] policy for next year. But the process we used this year is not much different from what we've done in any other year.

 

"The other objection was that maybe we wait until next year so we know if these [grant requests] align with the town's comprehensive plan. There's no daylight between the comprehensive plan and these proposals. The other issue that came up is we should bank a year or two of money and go big. The whole purpose of the CPA was it was written to support microprojects that are underfunded."

 

Patton said she agreed "some of these things are important to the community" and noted that her votes as a citizen at town meeting in May may be different from the decisions she made in her role as a Select Board member on Monday night.

 

"In this particular case, as we worry about this budget and worry about funds — and I know how the CPC works in terms of where the funds come from these two [grants] are not two that, with my Select Board hat on, I'm comfortable saying yes to," Patton said.

 

Neely agreed, saying the projects in question "potentially could be quite beneficial to the town."

 

"But in watching the Finance Committee meetings, I don't see a compelling reason to not follow their leads where these are concerned," Neely said. "I do have a strong concern about the budget, the necessary tax increases this year, and I really want to be mindful of that."

 

"This money doesn't come out of the budget," Fippinger replied.

 

"I understand," Neely said. "I misspoke."

 

At the March 19 Finance Committee meeting, the only rationale offered to vote against the CPC articles was expressed by the four members who voted against all seven of the CPA grants on the warrant; no explanation was given by the Fin Comm members who joined those four in voting down three of the grants. Neely "followed their lead" on three of the seven articles (the Store at Five Corners, skate park and mountain bike trail) and voted in favor of recommending town meeting passage of the other four.

 

The CPC's MacPherson, who also attended Monday's meeting, said her committee already is in the process of refining its criteria for evaluating grant requests and she thanked the Finance Committee for encouraging that refinement.

 

She said review of the process happened in parallel with the CPC's regular annual review of CPA applications and indicated it would be a mistake to conflate the two.

 

"My concern is the appearance of changing the rule halfway through the [annual] process," MacPherson said. "I'm not sure that's a message the CPC or the Select Board or the Finance Committee wants to have as a message.

 

"What we might be hearing [from applicants] is, 'We've done all this work … how come they changed the rules halfway through?' From the point of view of our fellow constituents who are doing non-profit work in the community, we need to be careful. Are we changing the rules halfway through or are we improving the rules … for next year?"

 

All votes by the Fin Comm and the Select Board regarding the CPA grants are merely recommendations to town meeting. The residents who attend the Thursday, May 22, meeting at Mount Greylock Regional School will have the final say on whether the CPA grants are awarded.

 

Budington on Monday noted that those recommendations, which are printed on the town meeting warrant, do carry weight.

 

"A lot of people who go to town meeting — the first time they hear arguments pro and con is at town meeting," Budington said. "When they hear the Fin Comm nearly disapproved of every project, why wouldn't they listen?"