Savoy Town Meeting Unanimously Backs McCann Tech Project
The members of Savoy's Select Board listen to a meeting member during Wednesday's session.
Savoy is one of nine municipalities that comprise the Northern Berkshire Vocational Regional School District.
All eight towns and the City of North Adams need to OK the project — either through inaction or a vote like Wednesday's – in order for the district to move forward with the project, 64 percent of which will be paid for by the Massachusetts School Building Authority under its Accelerated Repair Program.
McCann Tech Superintendent James Brosnan addressed the meeting to explain the reason for the repairs, how the district went through the MSBA process and how Savoy's portion of the capital project was determined.
The second-smallest of the nine municipalities after Monroe in both population and property value, Savoy would foot 1.91 percent of the bill under a formula determined by the regional agreement.
The exact dollar figure that local property taxpayers will pay will not be known for at least nine months, after the district goes through the borrowing process, Brosnan explained.
Based on a 3.5 percent interest rate on a 15-year bond, Savoy taxpayers would pay $14,741 in fiscal year 2028, the first year of bond repayments. That annual cost would decline steadily to $9,788 in the final year of the bond, FY42. In total, the town would pay $183,972 over the life of the bond.
"We're hoping [the project] is less than $16 million and change, and we're hoping to increase the amount reimbursed by MSBA," Brosnan told the meeting members gathered in the Savoy Fire Station.
"Last year, [the MSBA] had 26 projects in the commonwealth, and 24 of them came in under budget."
Thirty-seven Savoy residents checked into the meeting out of 587 registered voters in the town, a participation rate of 6.3 percent.
Some asked Brosnan about the general condition of the school that was built in 1961.
He told the meeting that as part of the MSBA's process, the state authority did on-site inspections and reviewed maintenance records going back decades.
"The accelerated repair program focuses on well-maintained buildings to do roofs and glass replacement," he said.
McCann is up-to-date in all other significant areas, having recently replaced its boiler and plumbing, he said.
The current proposed project would put a third roof on the North Adams secondary school that last was re-roofed in 1997. The other major part of the project would replace the original single-pane glass with more energy efficient windows.
Brosnan said the old windows are a safety concern.
"If a student hits it, it breaks, and it comes down like a guillotine," he said.
Although a couple of residents expressed concerns about the property tax implications, especially for the town's senior residents, most of the comments from the floor of the meeting were positive, including one member who praised Brosnan and his team for its stewardship of the building.
"Other towns have taken schools built at the same time and just torn them down," one resident said. "I think it's commendable McCann wants to make repairs. It's up to the town to figure out where the money comes from. It's a reasonable cost to the town for what we get."
Before the vote, Brosnan told the meeting that the reaction from other towns in the five-town district has been positive, including most recently the strong support of the Select Board in Williamstown. Brosnan said the question will be before the Lanesborough Select Board on Monday and the mayor of North Adams on Tuesday. Adams has a special town meeting scheduled for Oct. 28 with a special election on Nov. 4.
The McCann Tech project was item four on Wednesday's five-article warrant. The meeting took just over an hour.
Town officials got more pushback on the first three articles, all of which involved allocations from the town's stabilization account to pay outstanding debts.
Article 1 transferred $18,871 to cover the cost of transportation for students attending Smith Vocational and Agricultural High School in Northampton in order to study agriculture, a program not offered at McCann. Article 2 transferred $44,823 to cover shortfalls in the snow and ice line item for the winter of 2024-25. Article 3 sought $37,149 from stabilization to pay outstanding FY25 bills that were left unpaid when the town closed the books on the last fiscal year.
Meeting members were told that the added transportation cost was due to a miscommunication between the town and the Smith Voc district about Savoy's obligation. As for snow and ice, some members suggested increasing the line item for future years to avoid having to supplement with stabilization, which Select Board member Marie Saucier said stood at just more than $468,000 on Tuesday.
Article 3 generated considerable discussion about the nature of the shortfall.
Saucier explained that the unpaid bills from FY25 were due to "accounting issues" and that the newly hired town accountant is cleaning up mistakes that she inherited. She said none of the expenditures were improper.
Finance Committee member Kathy Luczynski, speaking from the floor of the meeting, concurred, saying that bills had not been paid on time. The town transferred a larger than expected amount of money from free cash to stabilization at the annual town meeting, and that money was essentially coming back from stabilization to pay overdue bills, she said.
"We were trying to budget based on incomplete records," Luczynski said. "It was very messy."
Saucier told the meeting that the town's books will be audited for FY25, the first audit the town has ordered since 2014.
All three fiscal articles passed by wide margins, as did Article 5, which sought to clean up the town's bylaws based on recommendations from the Collins Center for Public Management at the University of Massachusetts, which the town asked to review its code.
Tags: McCann, MSBA, school project, special town meeting,
