Will the override be single or tiered, $650,000 or $900,000? With 100 percent attendance Tuesday night, the Finance Committee, School Committee, and selectmen failed to arrive at consensus on funding town and school fiscal year 2008 budgets. The committees couldn’t agree on the amount of, and the strategy for, the override. Two scenarios emerged: to present the town with a budget based on a $650,000 override with the option of a second-tier override for the schools, or a budget based on a single override of $900,000 to fund everything. The seven members of the Finance Committee supported the $650,000-plus-tiers option.
According to Town Administrator Tim Bragan, the selectmen must vote on the Annual Town Meeting Warrant at their February 27 meeting. If they do not resolve their stalemate on an override amount, he said, there will be no override question on the town election ballot. In that case, he went on, the Finance Committee budget would be out of balance and would have to be further reduced by $650,000. According to Finance Committee Chairwoman Debbie Ricci, if residents vote to support an override of $900,000 when the finance board budget requests an override of $650,000, the $250,000 difference could not be spent unless that spending were approved at another town meeting.
The School Committee, reduced to four members after the recent resignation of member Paul Wormser, who has accepted a job in California, were united in favor of the $900,000 single override. But the selectmen, who are responsible for putting any override on the ballot, were split two and two on what they would support, with potential tie-breaker Selectman Scott Kimball vowing to support no override at all.
Earlier in the meeting, Bragan presented an updated budget recap showing a bottom line deficit of $650,878. He told the boards that adjustments made to reduce the earlier projected deficit of $1,000,000 came primarily from the Finance Committee’s recommended reductions of $30,000 to the library budget and of $300,000 to the school budget. He reminded those present that the bottom line did not include any cost-of-living increases for union employees, all of whose contracts remain unsettled.
Said School Committee Chairwoman Willie Wickman of the $300,000 reductionto her board’s budget, “This is going to do major damage.” When asked by Selectman Bob Eubank where the $300,000 figure came from, Ricci answered that her board had wrestled only with where the school budget should be in the context of the overall town financial picture. “School Committee will decide where the $300,000 will come from,” she added.
Finance Committee member Marie Sobalvarro explained that the committee looked at the total dollar increase requested by the School Committee and determined that after all fixed and mandatory increases were accounted for, there would still be over $200,000 available for new programs or staffing, even after a $300,000 reduction to the budget. Referring to the Finance Committee deliberations, Bragan said, “There was nobody at the table who thought there would be no cuts.” He went on to say that the numbers discussed ranged from $250,000 to as high as $550,000, before settling on $300,000 after “working the numbers forwards and backwards.”
Referring to the School and Finance Committees, Selectman Lucy Wallace warned, “It’s a balancing act and there’s a lot of tension on both sides.” She added, “The quality of our education is in jeopardy, and the residents in this town have overwhelmingly moved here for the schools.”
Bragan countered, “The $300,000 reduction doesn’t cut one person, one teacher that is there now.” Sobalvarro recommended “being sensitive to what the town can afford,” but at the same time making sure that “the town understands the impact” of the reductions.
