Budget Unchanged in Short Deliberative Session

The Deliberative Session last night left the warrant unchanged.  Turnout was very light: about 60 people were in the room, about 45 of them voters.  No amendments were proposed.  It was over in 70 minutes.

Election day is Tuesday, March 8, 2016.  We vote for a moderator (always Richard Laughton), two school board members, and YES or NO on the six questions.  (There are also the local town elections.)

The Deliberative Session began with the Distinguished Service Award being awarded to Cyd Scarano.   I could only jot down a few of Ms. Scarano's district projects from a very long list: Moharimet maple sugaring, Mast Way nature trails, girls soccer coach, green team leader, and on and on.  Congratulations. 

Next,  a board member presented each article.  It started with Al Howland presenting Article 3, the field bond.

As usual, the lion's share of the attention was directed toward this one, the $1.5M bond for the $2.2M field.  Nobody proposed any amendments, but five or six people felt compelled to tell us how great having a field would be and how smart we'd all become.  Nobody spoke against. Bob Barth read a long letter about how he was against the field article last year and he's for it now.  That's one.  135 more switches at we're at 60%.  No problem.

They keep telling us how we're going to save a few thousand in field rental fees, and another few thousand in buses, and make thousands in rental fees paid to us and save on pesticides and another few thousand here and there.  If it generously adds up to $20,000 for a $2M field, that's a 100 year payback time, which I wouldn't be bragging about.  That's not even counting the actual maintenance costs.  The field's a toy that if we want for our kids we're gonna have to pay for - this cost savings spin is just part of the sales job.

Article 4, the ORESPA contract, moved without discussion.  Nobody confused the year on year increases in the article with individual secretary salaries, as happens sometimes.

Article 5, selling the 25 acres, provoked some comment.  I think it was John Parsons who reminded the board that the voters already gave them the authority to sell the land some 8 years ago, so why bother with the article?  I had no idea about 8 years ago and I don't think anyone at the table did either.  But a quick thinking member, I think Kenny Rotner who was presenting, said the article was needed not only to give the board the authority to sell, but to direct the proceeds into the Facilities Development Capital Reserve Fund.  Touché.   I wasn't really sure whether this fund already exists, but Business Director Caswell confirmed yes, and it has $42K in its account.

Article 6 is the transferring $500,000 of the fund balance into the newly resurrected Facilities Development Capital Reserve Fund.  They're giving this song and dance about how the board can use the money for HVAC and boilers.  Two articles and not a single word about the field.  I got up and asked if this fund could be used to build the field, and the superintendent straightforwardly answered yes.   I asked if there was an intent to repeat article 6 next year, and he said the board had not discussed it.  I asked wouldn't it be better if the field was mentioned in the article explanation, and he agreed that would have been better.

The irony is that all the attention will be focused on getting article 3 passed, with the difficult 60% hurdle, when passing article 5 and 6 with an easy 50% vote gets us halfway to a field, unless they unluckily need a few boilers in a hurry.  Do it again next year and we're there or very near.  I don't know if it's good or bad that people won't know that they could probably get their field in a couple of years by voting YES on articles 5 and 6.   The district has a pretty solid history of passing reserve fund articles no matter what they say.

Article 7, the maximum $2,000 technology fund for underprivileged students, moved without comment.  I was tempted to ask if the $2,000 had any legal force being in the explanation not the article, but I'd been annoying enough up to that point so I let it go.

Article 8 was the big $42.3M budget.  The board really kept it pretty tight this year, with a 3% cap on "tax impact".  (I was gratified that the board adopted my ideas of including all the recommended articles and the revenue in the budget goal this year.)  This is apparent in the difference between the default budget (what you get if NO wins, mandated by law as honoring existing contracts but no other increases) and the operating budget (what you get if YES wins) being under $60,000 (a minuscule 0.15% of $42M).

Health insurance gave them a double whammy, first losing next year's "Premium Holiday" LGC lawsuit payout of $400,000 and then receiving budget guidance of a "guaranteed maximum" premium increase of 16.8%, $600,000.  They sorta blamed the staff's increased use of healthcare as the driver of the rise, which may be true but I thought was rude. Anyway, despite these hits, the board managed to squeeze in Full Day K and a field and a half, and still stay under 3%.   I thought they did a very good job in a difficult year and I told them so.

There was a discussion of why the 3% turns into a slightly larger number in your local school millage, with Chairman Newkirk citing the change in fund balance revenue and me proposing that it's because the state funding of 2/9 of our budget stayed flat, so the 3% is spread over only 7/9.  

Perhaps the low turnout shows no one's too outraged.  I keep waiting for the anti-tax folks to appear.

If school board candidate Margaret Redhouse was present, she did not make herself known.