After a last-ditch, week-long flurry of number-crunching, arm-twisting, and more than a little horse-trading, all the members of the Board of Selectmen, the School Committee, and the Finance Committee agreed on one thing: Harvard voters must approve a $200,000 Proposition 2½ override in June for the town to avoid significant reductions in services. The selectmen voted unanimously Tuesday night to put one $200,000 override question on the ballot for the June 11 town election, and the three boards committed themselves to selling it to the voters.
The Finance Committee is planning a town-wide mailing to explain the need for the override, which will arrive before the May 21 Special Town Meeting, when a slimmed-down fiscal year 2009 budget will be up for approval. The new budget will be contingent on passage of the override, and if it fails, still another special town meeting would be scheduled to approve a reduced budget.
Harvard voters defeated a $786,000 override on April 1 by 86 votes, which left the town without an approved budget for fiscal year 2009. Since then, the three boards arrived at the new override figure by identifying $257,400 in adjustments, including $240,000 in state aid that was announced after the Annual Town Meeting Warrant and April election ballot were printed. In addition, the schools came up with $159,000 in budget cuts, and a total of $51,600 was pared from other municipal departments’ budgets. If this new override fails, another $200,000 would have to be cut—$145,000 from the school budget, and $55,000 in other departmental spending. (See budget story)
The big question Tuesday night was whether the selectmen would agree to add additional funding requests to the override. A week ago, they thought they would be dealing with three such requests: the School Committee was looking for money to hire a new special education teacher and to buy textbooks; the library needed funding to pay for substitute coverage, and the Council on Aging wanted to make its director’s job full-time.
By Tuesday, only the COA request for $12,500 remained; the schools and the library had both found other ways to fund their requests.
In a lengthy, sometimes emotional debate on this issue, selectmen seemed torn between a desire to adequately provide services to the town’s elderly residents and a fear that adding another request to the $200,000 would seriously endanger the override. Selectmen Tim Clark and Lucy Wallace both called on the board to show leadership in helping what Clark called “the most vulnerable portion of our population.” Answering board member Ron Ricci’s argument that the town should start “living within its means,” Clark said he agrees with that idea, but that “the Council on Aging is reaching a portion of the community with real challenges in these things.” He added that the request would cost each household “about two cents a day” which “most of us can find on the floor of our car.”
On the other side of the fence were Ricci and board member Peter Warren, both of whom argued strongly for holding the override request at the $200,000 level. Both cited clear evidence in the community of resistance to any override, and expressed fear that asking for too much would risk getting nothing at all. Ricci had no problem supporting the COA request, he said, as long as it was included in the $200,000 override question and cuts were made elsewhere to make up for it. For his part, Warren complained that the COA was being “unfair to the other departments” who have seen their budgets cut. The selectmen had previously agreed that the COA’s budget would not be cut.
Board Chairman Leo Blair wondered if there isn’t a way to find money in the budget for this request without going for an override. Because the amount is so small, he said he finds it hard to believe there isn’t enough left over somewhere in the budget to fund it, even if only for one year, adding that if there’s no money to keep the position full-time in the following year, the director’s hours could be cut.
But in the end, when it came to a choice between one $200,000 override question and two questions—one for $200,000 and a second for $212,500, including the COA request—Blair sided with Ricci and Warren, and the request was denied.
The back story
At their Monday morning meeting the selectmen wrestled with the question of the additional funding requests from the library and the Council on Aging, both of which had asked to be included as separate questions on the override ballot. The library had submitted a request for $11,905 to provide coverage when staff takes time off, a need that arose recently after a new town policy went into effect requiring workers to take accrued vacation time or lose it. But at the Finance Committee’s Tuesday night meeting, Finance Director Lorraine Leonard revealed that the library has more than $18,000 in state grant money that it could use for this purpose, and when the library trustees heard this news, they agreed to withdraw their request.
The COA’s request for $12,505 was to cover an increase in the paid hours of the COA director, up to 40 from the present 30 hours a week. In advocating to present this to voters in a ballot question, COA Chairwoman Carlene Phillips said, “With the increasing senior population in town, this should be considered level funding. The fact that it passed at Town Meeting indicates it could have town support.” She added that voter approval of the COA request would add only a little more than $5 to the average household’s property tax bill.
But the Finance Committee did not support the request, arguing that in this financial climate, all town departments should look for alternative ways to get things done, and for outside funding if at all possible. In particular, board Chairwoman Debbi Ricci said Tuesday that the COA could free up many hours for its director by finding somebody else to chaperone group-sponsored trips.
“You don’t need to be a social worker to be a trip chaperone,” Ricci reasoned.
Only Finance Committee member Marie Sobalvarro spoke in favor of the COA request, arguing that the rising number of elderly residents justifies having a full-time director, and if the town doesn’t fund it now, “it won’t get done.”
Sobalvarro is not optimistic, she said, about the prospects for improvement in town finances anytime soon.
The arguments
Clark suggested at Monday’s meeting that the board present the agreed-upon $200,000 override as one ballot question and add the two other requests as “menu choices” for voters. But Blair, who at the start of the meeting commended the School Committee for its “courageous and unselfish” actions in cutting its budget to conform to the $200,000 override level, said it would be unfair to entertain other articles without reconsidering the $65,000 override request the school board had withdrawn during its earlier budget deliberations. School Committee Chairman Stu Sklar, however, said his committee would not be resubmitting that request for consideration, and added the observation that the library and COA requests would add only $12.60 to the average tax bill.
But even that amount seemed too much for Warren, who said, “It’s tough times. Every board in town is suffering by this. We have to realize the financial constraints the town is under.” Warren suggested that if the library and COA requests were added to the warrant, the $200,000 override should be reduced by that amount.
Ricci agreed. He also challenged the library’s request, noting that, according to the most recently available IRS form 990 listing the assets of the library trust, the entity has $1.85 million in assets. He said he’d need to see the IRS 990 form for the period ending June 2007 before deciding if the library’s request was warranted.
Referencing feedback from the recent voter survey conducted by the League of Women Voters and the Harvard Press, Wallace said voters clearly want a choice.
“We’d be arrogant not to put the library and COA requests on the ballot as separate questions,” she said.
Warren reiterated his concern about adding anything other than the $200,000 override to the ballot. “If we go over the $200,000 we may be in jeopardy of having nothing,” he said.
Ricci agreed. “The $200,000 override is a sellable item,” he asserted. “If we put more on [the ballot] and it fails, we’re in trouble. We could lose teachers.”
For his part, Clark said he thinks the $200,000 override is “reasonable and sustainable,” and that he doesn’t think the addition of two questions on the ballot would reduce the probability of its passage.
Ricci was not swayed in his convictions. “We need to present one clear choice that we can sell to the voters,” he retorted.
Public comment
Old Boston Turnpike resident Holly Rothkopf, addressing selectmen’s speculation about what level of override would pass, said, “There’s no certainty that any override will pass. As a town and as leaders our job is to be sensitive to the fact that we are in tough times. I would suggest that you make a decision that at a certain level this [amount] is what is essential for the running of the town.… Our voters are made up of adults. They should have the right to vote it down.”
She added her concern about “fantasy and paranoia creeping into people’s feelings about each other,” such as a fantasy about waste in town spending. “We need creative solutions to counteract this fantasy of boards squandering funds,” she said.
Laura Martineau, of Stow Road, asserted, “People have lost faith in the numbers. They don’t understand why the [budget] number is so high in the beginning and then gets whittled down.” She added her view that the timing of annual town meeting and the election is partly to blame for the constant readjustment, since Harvard’s budget cycle starts well before the state releases all of its aid numbers.
Blair commented that the board had already started discussions about the possibility of moving Annual Town Meeting to April.
And finance board member George McKenna said Tuesday that he thinks Town Meeting should be in May. “The rush to judgment in March burns us,” McKenna observed wryly.
Still River resident Deborah Skauen-Hinchliffe was not convinced that all possible cuts had been made. “I’m concerned that you don’t have a fallback budget,” she said. “I don’t support any override; I see a lot of fat. Why haven’t you come up with a zero override?”
“We’ve looked at those numbers, and we know what they are,” answered Blair, adding that voters would in fact have the option of voting for no override.
Stu Sklar, of Scott Road, who serves as chairman of the School Committee, suggested that the selectmen convert the Elderly and Disabled Tax Fund to a “community chest” fund, available to help anyone having serious trouble paying property taxes.
Still River Depot Road resident Lorin Johnson said, “I thought with this process we were going to galvanize the town and become whole again. … I’m reminded of the Pledge of Allegiance … and ‘the Republic for which it stands.’ A republic considers the one, the few, and the all.”
