WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Community Preservation Committee on Tuesday voted to backtrack on a plan to ask town meeting to increase the town's Community Preservation Act surcharge on local property tax bills.

 

And it heard arguments that the town should be asked whether to pull out of the CPA program altogether.

 

Earlier this month, the panel voted 6-2 to develop an article for the May annual town meeting warrant that would have asked whether the town should increase the current 2 percent surcharge (with the first $100,000 of property value excepted) to 3 percent, the maximum allowed under the CPA.

 

Committee members argued that raising the local surcharge to the maximum would unlock significantly more in matching funds from the commonwealth. Hypothetically, for example, the town would have received nearly twice the state funding for CPA projects in FY24 (the most recent year available) had it charged a 3 percent surcharge instead of the current 2 percent.

 

After hearing two members of the town's Finance Committee, a former Select Board member and one member of the public question whether the CPA surcharge makes sense at all for the town, five members of the CPC at Tuesday's meeting voted not to put the surcharge increase warrant article to a vote at the annual town meeting.

 

Nate Budington, one of four members to flip their votes from the Feb. 4 meeting, joined others in saying he was on the fence on the issue in light of the ever-increasing tax burden faced by property owners to support town and school operations.

 

"As to the surcharge, like other people, I went back and forth. I've had a couple of conversations with people on Spring Street about the demise of the [Williamstown Theatre Festival] and what that's meant to their business," Budington said. "And I don't think that's going to get any better. If anything, it's going in the wrong direction. And that's ominous to me.

 

"I think I'm moving more in the camp of not supporting the 3 percent. As much as I'd like to get the extra match money and as much I think we can continue to do important things with it."

 

Budington, Barbara Halligan, Polly Macpherson and Molly Magavern, who voted in a 6-2 majority to advance the surcharge increase proposal earlier in the month, each voted against the idea on Tuesday, joining Samantha Page, who voted against the hike at both meetings. Peter Beck, who voted in the minority on Feb. 4, did not attend on Tuesday; Steven Dew missed both meetings.

 

Alison Bost, who did the research, along with members of the state's Community Preservation Coalition, into how much more money the town could get in matching funds with the larger surcharge, voted for the increase at both meetings, as did committee Chair Philip McKnight.

 

"I am reluctant to ever suggest a tax increase," Bost said. "With that said, I don't think I've seen another tax increase as minimal as this one. Granted, it's not minimal to everyone. I think there are valid issues people have raised tonight.

 

"But based on my research and thinking about this, we're leaving state money on the table. And with a minimal increase, we would get a significantly greater share of state money."

 

McKnight also made the "minimal increase" argument, in part responding to comment the CPC heard from Fred Puddester, the chair of the town's Finance Committee.

 

"The 1 percent increase is very modest," McKnight said. "It's modest on the average taxpayer, $60-odd dollars. … That provides us an opportunity to get into the second and third rounds of state matches. And, in fiscal 2025, that would have been an extra $100,000 over what we would have had at 2 percent."

 

A couple of committee members ultimately siding against McKnight on putting the question this annual town meeting left the door open for further study and public outreach in advance of asking to raise the surcharge at the May 2027 meeting or some later date.

 

Inspired by the Feb. 4 vote to ask for the hike this year, Puddester, Fin Comm Vice Chair Suzanne Stinson and two community members, Hugh Daley and Paul Harsch, addressed the committee to speak to the proposed increase.

 

Puddester argued against the proposal on two grounds: property taxes already are growing too fast and the Community Preservation Act itself is a "bad deal" for towns and cities who have accepted it.

 

"You may remember we had an 11 percent increase in our taxes last year because the Fire District piggy-backed on top of the town increase," Puddester said. "[The Finance Committee begins our discussions [Wednesday] on the budget, and it looks like this year is another in the 7, 7.5 percent range.

 

"If you compound those increases, that's 20 percent over two years for, basically, as [Town Manager Robert Menicocci] described it, a maintenance budget."

 

Puddester — and later Stinson — argued that the state executed a bait and switch when it created the CPA, which Williamstown adopted in 2002. In exchange for the town enacting the local property tax surcharge, the state offered a 100 percent match when the program started. By 2024, that state match was down to 18 percent, according to the CPC's figures.

 

That falloff in the state match is largely because Williamstown was an early adopter of the CPA program, and as more cities and towns participated, the pool of available funds — generated by a tax on filing fees for deed transfers — was divided among more and more municipalities. The CPC's proposal to raise the local surcharge would, in part, have addressed that, because later rounds of matching funds — open to municipalities charging a 3 percent surcharge — are funded by means other than the deed tax.

 

Puddester also criticized the very nature of the Community Preservation Act for creating a pool of restricted funds (town and state) that only can be spent on specific purposes: community housing, historic preservation and open space and recreation.

 

"I did 20 years in the state budget office," Puddester said. "I've seen lots of programs like this. And what they tend to lead to, sadly, is bad decisions. Why are they bad decisions? Because money is sitting in a pot and can only be used for certain things. The priorities of the town change all the time. This is locked in stone for these four things."

 

He said the current CPC made a "bad decision" this year when it voted to send town meeting requests to fund two applications that scored low on a grading system implemented by the committee for the first time this year.

 

"You had a great process this year," Puddester said. "You looked at merit. You looked at need. But you funded two projects of low merit and low need — not by my assessment, but by your assessment. That's not the way we should use our money.

 

"Why did you fund projects of low need and low merit? I listened to your meeting. One of you said, 'We have the money.' You had the money. It was restricted only for these purposes. And you just had it. That's not a good way to prioritize projects in town."

 

Three of the 10 applications for CPA funds were rated in the "low merit/low need" quadrant on a scoring system used by the nine Community Preservation Committee members.

 

One, from the Mount Greylock Regional School District, did not make it out of committee. One, from the Sand Springs Recreation Center, was sent by the committee to town meeting at 33 percent of the dollar amount sought by the applicant. One, from Images Cinema, was recommended to town meeting at the full amount sought in the application.

 

The Images application fell under the CPA's "historic preservation" category, one of the categories that merits a 10 percent set aside under the act, meaning that 10 percent of all the money the town receives in a given year must go toward the category. Even if town meeting funds all three historic preservation requests advanced by the CPC, those three grants will leave $13,400 of the FY27 10 percent set aside for applications in that category in future years.

 

Of note, the nine committee members ranked the 10 projects on the table this winter as one group, rather than rating categories in each of the CPA's categories against one another. In other words, when the committee's aggregate score for the Images application put its "need" ranking as the lowest of the 10, that need was being ranked against the need to fund, for example, community housing through the Affordable Housing Trust.

 

Later in Tuesday's meeting, Magavern spoke to that issue in a conversation about setting a framework for the committee's FY28 deliberations.

 

"I would like to discuss rating projects within each category," Magavern said. "Because I found myself, if I'm to be completely honest, gaming a little bit, because I knew the historic preservation projects would all get funded."

 

At Tuesday's meeting, the question was raised whether the CPC would have any need to discuss applications beyond FY27, the fiscal year that begins on July 1.

 

Daley addressed the committee to suggest that in addition to a warrant article seeking to raise the CPA surcharge from 2 to 3 percent (before that plan was scrapped), the committee also should ask town meeting members whether to lower the CPA surcharge to 0 percent, effectively pulling the town out of the Community Preservation Act program.

 

"That way, the community gets a chance and you get a chance to market test whether the community wants to keep doing this," Daley said. "It proves out whether or not you're still serving a valuable function through the voting of the community. It would also validate your future decisions.

 

"I think you've been doing this for over 20 years. Let's check in. Let's revalidate that this is what we want to keep doing."

 

Stinson later echoed Daley's suggestion.

 

McKnight reminded the pair that they were free to put forward the 0 percent proposal by way of citizens petition to get it on the town meeting warrant. But Daley said it would be better if the idea came from the CPC, because then it would not show up at the end of the warrant, after the meeting conducted all the town's fiscal business, including the FY27 CPA grant requests.

 

The committee Tuesday took no action to develop a warrant article asking town meeting to reaffirm the 2002 decision to participate in the CPA program. It did approve warrant article language for all eight applications that will go to town meeting this May, concluding the committee's business for the FY27 funding cycle.