Con: Override the override
Anyone who’s been following the news for the past nine months knows that the economic status quo in America has changed. The implosion of the housing market has caused company closings, job losses, home foreclosures, abysmal interest rates on savings. Record-high oil prices are driving record-high gasoline, food, clothing, and consumer product prices. These changes aren’t happening “out there” in the world. They’re happening here … to us and to our neighbors.
Tough financial times can create a clear lens through which to examine what we need versus what we want.
The town has money to spend: most of us just wrote checks for our quarterly share of support for town services. If voters turn down the next request for an override, the checks we write next quarter will be the same amount. What services that we need won’t we get if that happens?
Students in the 2008–2009 school year will continue to be taught well, giving them the chance to learn, score well on their tests, be accepted into colleges, become valuable assets to society (N.B. Something that is not predicated on college). They will be safe in their school buildings. They will be able to play on competitive teams and participate in noncompetitive activities in school, at the pond, on the playing fields, at the library, in their homes.
We’ll have ambulance, fire, and police coverage. The highway department will clear roads in winter and fix them in the summer, so they’re safe to use. Town Hall employees will help us with our required filings and payments, see that the town pays its bills, make sure that elections are run fairly. Our volunteer boards and officials will be able to function. Granted, some things may take longer and require more patience, but patience is easier to come up with than cash for many people.
We’ll still have our conservation land, orchards, farms, picturesque town center, churches, celebrations, scenic roads. We’ll still have a commitment to participation, volunteerism, and community—perhaps even more so since we’ll all be making sacrifices.
In short, with last year’s budget we’re meeting our needs and enjoying many of our wants.
As for adding more, let’s hold off. Let’s take this unusual opportunity to rethink our spending and ask more questions.
This year especially, the School Committee needs to involve itself in the management of the schools by managing the superintendent. Does the board challenge new spending requests? Is it questioning all spending on administrative salaries and benefits? Does it require that school administrators put off filling open administrative positions in order to avoid teacher layoffs if an override fails?
Of course, the downturn we’re in won’t last forever. This is another boom-and-bust economic cycle that will eventually ease and then start over again. How bad will it get? Nobody knows. How soon will it be over? Nobody knows. But one measure of our intelligence is how well we adapt to change while it’s happening. Once we find ourselves in a hole, how long does it take us to stop digging the hole deeper?
We’re in a hole right now. Let’s stop digging.
Laura Andrews is a resident of Scott Road.
Pro: The override … context, values, solutions
Another year, another override.
Especially in these tough times, with fuel and food prices rising, we all struggle with this proposal—all the more so if we are on a fixed income. And the override decision we approach in the forthcoming special election could have long-lasting repercussions on the things many of us most value about our town: its noncommercial character, its services, its schools and property values. With so much at stake, I believe it is vital for us to think about three important factors: context, core values, and long-term solutions.
Context—The structural deficit
Proposition 2½, which passed through a statewide ballot initiative in 1980, creates a levy ceiling that prevents towns from raising taxes in excess of 2.5 percent of the cash value of all taxable property in the community, and in excess of 2.5 percent above the prior year’s levy limit plus increases in new taxable property.
Towns with additional tax revenue from commercial industry, large amounts of new growth, significant Chapter 70 state aid for schools and/or shared regionalized school expenses can add revenue where Prop. 2½ would otherwise cause shortfalls. Through Harvard’s historical choices around zoning, conservation, and local schooling, we are not in this position.
For years inflation has grown faster than revenues, with no immediate end in sight. Over the past year, Harvard’s aggregate revenues increased by 1.1 percent. Aggregate expenses increased by 5.6 percent. That 4.5 percent shortfall is our structural deficit.
It is key to realize that the override proposal we face is generated primarily by the structural deficit and the constraints placed upon tax increases by a law created in 1980—not by gross financial mismanagement on the part of our local boards.
Core values
How can we be as lean as possible while protecting—and investing in—the core values of the town as we see them, especially in the face of economic pressure and Prop. 2½ constraints?
First, I believe we should each define for ourselves, and then contribute as part of the public dialogue, what it is we most value about our town. Like many others, my family chose to assume the higher expenses of living in Harvard to partake in the benefits of a beautiful, more rural location, an excellent school system, a strong sense of community—and the greater potential for positive return on investment in our property that accompanies the excellent schools, beautiful location, and sense of community.
Second, I believe a budget that invests in these core values should be arrived at through rigorous analysis and respectful dialogue, with a priority of balancing the diverse needs of our townsfolk as best as possible. I also believe the budgetary process should place an emphasis on effective leanness, not reactive cutting.
Long-term approaches and solutions
I expect we’ll never be rid of override requests altogether as long as Prop. 2½ reigns and prices rise. But I believe it is reasonable to hope that we can brainstorm about and research long-term solutions that may render override requests less-than-inevitable on an annual basis, and/or at least that may decrease significantly the percentage of override funding for budgets. These long-term solutions should accommodate people of different needs, views, and means in the town. Here are just a few of the ideas I’ve heard.
- Long-term planning that creates revolving—perhaps incremental—responses to various needs. One year we take care of the library’s and COA’s budgetary growth needs (and I wish the new Board of Selectmen had placed these options on the forthcoming ballot so the town could choose); maybe the next we invest in the DPW or the town center.
- New tax bases through limited, thoughtfully-chosen commercial development.
- Advocating an adjustment in the formula for how Chapter 70 state aid for schools is calculated away from average (mean) town income and to median town income.
- A Harvard town foundation. The nonprofit Medfield Foundation in my old home town of Medfield partners with citizen project leaders to raise money for one-time expenses, such as a new bus for the COA and sports equipment for the schools.
At the Special Town Meeting on May 21, we will be asked to vote on a budget dependent upon a $200,000 override. This number is the amount required to cover debt created by motions already passed at Town Meeting: approving teacher and other employee contracts previously funded through one-time-only free cash. Speaking for my own priorities, it is even thinner than a bare-bones number. Not passing it could mean the start of diminishing or dismantling some of the core things many of us most value about our town.
I support this year’s override, and simultaneously hope we all redouble our efforts to find the most efficient, inclusive long-term solutions.
Bob Eiland is a resident of Harris Lane.
