ORANGE — It’s still uncertain how much money the town will seek through a tax override, but it is certain there will be a tax override vote.

Facing financial woes, the Selectboard set a date for a Proposition 2½ tax override vote to be held Monday, July 29.

Proposition 2½ is a state statute that allows the town to raise more money than normally allowed from real estate and personal property taxes, which is 2½ percent. It must be approved as a ballot question at an election.

Orange’s Annual Town Meeting will be held Monday, June 17, where residents will vote on the budget. The budget will be contingent on the tax override passing July 29.

If the budget passes, but the override fails, then cuts will have to be made to close the gap between the town’s revenue and operating costs. Early in the budget process, that gap was around $750,000, a number that would have to be covered by a successful tax override vote to cover departments’ individual budgets.

However, Finance Committee Chairman Keith LaRiviere later said that cuts to the Orange elementary schools’ requested budget could shrink that fiscal shortfall. Initially, the Finance Committee discussed shrinking the gap to around $470,000, which would still need to be made up via a tax override.

Exact numbers at this point are unknown.

The overall recommended budget that will appear on the 34-article Annual Town Meeting warrant — which residents can view on the Orange town website — is expected to be about $20.5 million. That number, Finance Committee member Kathy Reinig explained Wednesday, may go up or down during deliberations on the Town Meeting floor, which would affect the necessary tax override number.

A source of tension during this year’s budget process has been the Orange elementary schools’ requested budget of $6,953,117, a nearly $600,000 (9 percent) increase over their current budget fueled by the mid-year hiring of 11 new staff — classroom teachers, paraprofessionals and a guidance counselor.

Members of the Selectboard and Finance Committee expressed frustration about school officials’ lack of explanation over the new hires — with allusions made to problems with student behavior and the firing of a principal at Fisher Hill Elementary School this year. Selectman Bill Wrigley said he has never seen such an increase in staffing in one year without a detailed public explanation.

Given the lack of thorough explanation, and the large portion of the town’s budget taken up by education — about 55 percent of the $20 million budget voted last year — the Selectboard voted last month to support no more than a $300,000 increase in funding for the elementary schools, slashing the schools’ requested increase in half.

Wednesday night, Selectman Tom Smith said he has been “disgusted” with the budget process this year, specifically mentioning how late the schools’ requested budget was determined.

Orange’s school officials have pointed to a lack of adequate funding from the state, as well as cost increases in areas like special education and health insurance, as other factors putting stress on the budget.

Indeed, the state’s Chapter 70 funding formula, which determines state aid to public schools, shortchanges Orange in two areas. First, Orange is a rural area where schools faces increased costs of transportation compared to urban schools, but Chapter 70 has no rurality factor to make up for this.

Also, Chapter 70 uses an assumed percentage to calculate how much money Orange needs for special education. It assumes Orange has 22 in-district special education students (3.75 percent of total enrollment), when, in reality, Orange has 159 such students (about 26 percent of total enrollment). This creates a gap in funding of more than $3 million that, because of state mandates for special education, must be made up by the district.

Reach David McLellan at
dmclellan@recorder.com or 413-772-0261, ext. 268.