COLRAIN — Colrain voters approved the town’s $1.8 million assessment for the Mohawk Trail Regional School District’s budget for next year, despite the Finance Committee’s advice to vote against it.
Some residents expressed concern that the school’s budget has been swallowing up larger and larger portions of the town’s budget, increasing taxes to the point where some of the town’s senior residents on fixed incomes are having trouble affording basic necessities like food and medication.
Finance Committee member Lori Shearer said she opposed the budget this year because she hasn’t seen any sustained effort toward fixing the problem.
“We’re looking again at a school budget our town cannot afford, with relatively few Colrain students and taxpayers paying a high price,” Shearer said. “We’ve been told actions are being taken, but in the years that I’ve sat on this committee, it’s been the same excuses, same rhetoric, but no sustained effort to move toward changes.”
Buoniconti agreed that the school’s financial situation has become unsustainable, but assured the voter that a planning committee has been working to develop a plan.
“We’re on a path that we cannot sustain,” Buoniconti said. “We’ve been talking about this for about 10 years. The budget is 3.33 percent, but the portion to each town is higher, it’s about 6.3, and Colrain is 7.12 percent. The School Committee knows we need to do something different, and there’s a strategic planning committee underway. We’ve hit a cliff, and we’re going to have to change things going forward.”
Those changes, he said, need to come not just locally, but politically at the state level. Buoniconti noted that state aid to the district has been flat for about a decade, while expenses in transportation, special education, health care and other areas have risen.
Buoniconti noted that he’s gathered superintendents from other rural districts across the state to form the Association of Regional Rural School Districts, which he said plans to lobby to that to expand education funding beyond Chapter 70 and aid tied to enrollment.
The article passed by a thin margin, 50-42.
Voters also approved about $52,000 to continue supporting the district’s pre-Kindergarten program, which is designed to bring more students into the district, increasing enrollment and, thus, funding. They also approved about $39,000 for Mohawk’s capital assessment.
An article that would have changed parts of the district’s regional agreement to allow decisions to be made by two-thirds majority instead of unanimous vote was postponed indefinitely, to be taken up at a future town meeting.
Voters approved:
A $1.5 million operating budget for fiscal year 2017.
$309,414 for the Franklin County Regional Technical Vocational School’s annual assessment.
$56,000 for the town’s Smith Vocational School Transportation and Tuition assessment.
$2,000 for the restoration and preservation of town records
$13,500 for a town audit.
$17,000 for a new transfer station compactor.
$2,500 for the ongoing maintenance of the G. William Pitt House.
Establishing and transferring $50,000 into an Other Post-Employment Benefits liability trust fund.
$3,500 for the removal of an underground oil tank at the Fire Station.