CHARLEMONT — With an aging population of 1,200 residents, Charlemont can’t find enough ambulance service volunteers to meet state requirements. And, with its annual $3 million budget, it can’t afford $5 million worth of priority bridge repairs.
In Wendell, people can’t even rent apartments to nearby college students who won’t live in a town without high-speed Internet. In Hawley, where the state already owns roughly half the town land, the Selectboard has urged the state not to buy up another 90 acres of land, to be taken off the town tax rolls.
And Heath wants to share a Highway Department mechanic — because the town doesn’t need one full-time. This need started another chain of conversation: Why can’t towns share expensive highway and fire equipment that might only be needed a few times a year for any single town?
Broadband, bridges, ambulance and equipment sharing, unfunded mandates from Boston, shrinking school enrollments and rising school budgets comprising between 55 percent to 70 percent of some towns’ annual budgets, were all too familiar to the 40 to 50 town officials who came to Charlemont’s first Small Town Summit Thursday night.
They gathered at the Hawlemont Regional School to voice common concerns about problems they are certain that state government leaders in Boston know nothing about. Lack of Broadband topped the list, as community leaders fear a growing “economic divide” between the eastern and western halves of the state.
“I think, what ties these things together is Boston isn’t connected to western Massachusetts,” said Rowe Selectboard Chairman Marilyn Wilson. “What Boston decrees doesn’t apply to western Massachusetts.”
Besides wanting to know when the Last Mile broadband build out will start, town officials wanted “different options for borrowing,” according to Charlemont Selectboard member Toby Gould, that might give struggling rural hilltowns an easier way to borrow their share of broadband build-out costs, with low-interest pay-back options.
“Wireless doesn’t work in the hilltowns,” said Gould, reflecting concerns that the state might change its focus from fiber optics to the less expensive wireless technologies, that depend on line-of-sight relays, which is harder to obtain in steep, hilly forested towns.
“Does the government know that 7,000 people here already signed up for broadband,” he asked, referring to WiredWest’s presubscription sign-up rate.
The group of selectmen and other town officials that discussed broadband agreed that “Broadband fiber is the keystone to economic development in the hilltowns,” said Gould. “Without it, we’re not going to grow our economy or our tax base. Without broadband, we’re dead.”
A group of town officials that discussed state reimbursement for untaxed state-owned land, and school state aid decided there should be some regulation that limits untaxed conservation land to no more than 35 percent or 40 percent of the land within a town’s borders. More than half of Hawley is state-owned land, and the roads that run through it haven’t been repaired since Tropical Storm Irene closed them five years ago.
Shelburne Finance Committee member John Payne pointed to regional transportation as a big expense and one reason for this is a mandate that students of different ages, for instance, sixth-graders and 12th-graders, not ride the same buses together. He said required paperwork to Boston is also costing small towns with part-time staff much time and money.
One group discussed whether towns could share municipal services the way they now share regional schools. For instance, New Salem and Wendell now share a fire chief, instead of each town having its own part-time chief. Could that work in other towns? Heath Selectboard Chairwoman Sheila Litchfield said that, for more inter-municipal sharing of police, fire and highway services, towns would have to balance their need for autonomy and local control with a vision of what the towns want a shared arrangement to look like. Considerations would include how to share a budget and how each town would have a voice in the service.
Leyden Finance Committee member Michele Giarusso said state incentives for school districts to regionalize in the 1990s have dried up — especially the promise for the state to pick up 100 percent of regional transportation costs. “Between 55 percent to 70 percent of towns’ budgets is schools, and town officials have no control,” Giarusso remarked. She said better relationships between school boards and town officials have helped in some cases, but there are state mandates that also affect school budgets. The most recent, she said, is opioid training, and bullying training mandates.
“Most of our schools are losing population, and some buildings are half-empty,” she said. “How can we use the buildings better?” Also, Giarusso and a Leyden selectman said their town is seeing an enrollment decline caused by a rise in homeschooling. They said they would like more information about why families are opting out of public schools for this.
Buckland Selectboard member Dena Willmore spoke about how Buckland may be getting overcharged in the state’s minimum required contribution for education, because the town’s per-capita income has been incorrectly calculated based on a single zip code used by only a quarter of thes town’s population. Buckland has four ZIP codes. Heath, which has 700 residents and uses five ZIP codes, is also investigating whether state calculations for the town’s education costs are correct.
Ruth Kennedy of Russell said there are many other task force groups now meeting within western Massachusetts to discuss the problems addressed in Charlemont. She suggested the group get in contact with the others, so that a bigger group “could let Boston know” about the rural town problems.
Selectboard Chairman John Sears of Hawley suggested defining legislative goals and meeting as early as possible with state representatives.
Erwin Reynolds of Charlemont, now a School Committee member, pointed out that the newly formed association of rural schools “are talking about pretty much the same thing,” and he suggested this new summit group work together with the school association.
During the course of the meeting, the town officials — from Charlemont, Rowe, Hawley, Heath, Shelbune, Buckland, Wendell, Deerfield, Leyden, Plainfield, Russell and other towns — broke into small discussion groups and agreed to meet again, on June 2 at Hawlemont, to set goals an talk about possible ways to work together on common problems. That meeting is now scheduled for 7 p.m.
You can reach Diane
Broncaccio at
dbroncaccio@recorder.com
or at 772-0261, ext. 277.