CHARLEMONT — Voters at a sparsely attended joint Town Meeting between Charlemont and Hawley Saturday unanimously approved a $2.2 million fiscal year 2021 budget for the Hawlemont Regional School District.
The meeting, which lasted 10 minutes, was held at Hawlemont Regional Elementary School at 7 p.m. Hawley Selectboard members were present, as were Hawlemont School Committee members.
The Charlemont Selectboard was not present.
The meeting comes after Hawley approved by a Special Town Meeting vote its revised assessment for the school budget — which the School Committee voted on at its Sept. 25 meeting — whereas Charlemont opted to pass its assessment in two parts, the first of which was approved at its Annual Town Meeting in July, before the town received its revised assessment.
An additional $40,737 was approved at a Special Town Meeting in Charlemont on Nov. 14 to pay the full fiscal year 2021 amount.
“Although both towns appear to have approved the budget in principal at this point — and that wasn’t the case at the time this meeting was called, but it does seem to be now — the vote on the Charlemont end left a certain level of ambiguity,” said School Committee Chair Hussain Hamdan, who is also on the Hawley Selectboard.
Although Charlemont eventually approved two numbers that totaled the town’s assessment, Hamdan said the town’s approach did not conform to statutory language, thus requiring the School Committee to call a district-wide meeting.
“It’s probably less attended than either of our Town Meetings, but we’re going to follow procedure,” Hamdan said. “I know it’s a pain in the neck we have to do this … but that’s what the (state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education) has told us we have to do.”
The reassessed contributions toward Hawlemont’s fiscal year 2021 budget are $877,869 from Charlemont and $262,040 from Hawley. (Although Heath also sends students to Hawlemont, as tuition-paying students, the town does not vote on the school budget.)
“Again, these are the numbers which the Town Meetings have already, essentially, approved,” Hamdan said.
Hamdan noted that the individual assessments do not total the overall $2.2 million budget. He explained this is because the overall budget also factors in other revenue sources such as state aid.
Hawley Selectboard member Robert Maclean asked how meeting voters could approve a budget without anyone from the Charlemont Selectboard present.
“They were invited,” Hamdan said. “We posted it at the Charlemont Town Hall; we posted it at the post office. We posted it … on the school district website. We posted it on the town of Hawley website. It was in the newspaper.”
Charlie Ricko, a Hawlemont School Committee member and resident of Charlemont, said he thought the lack of attendance in general at the meeting on Saturday was a result of the information put out by the Charlemont Selectboard that suggested “this was an unnecessary meeting.”
“It would be nice to at least see one Charlemont Selectboard member, since they were so vocal about it,” Ricko said.
During the brief discussion, only one person in the six-member audience spoke, and it was to commend the district, calling it a “wonderful school system.”
By a show of hands, the budget passed unanimously.
Mary Byrne can be reached at mbyrne@recorder.com or 413-930-4429. Twitter: @MaryEByrne