On Oct. 6, I voted “no” on the Franklin County Technical School (FCTS) — not because I disparage education — but because our city is carrying major debt.
The Greenfield City Council met with the FCTS superintendent nine months ago. Members were told that Greenfield had 129 students at the Tech — 22% of total school enrollment. In addition to the $56 million cost to Greenfield taxpayers over 30 years of bonding ($1.86 million average per year), the annual tuition cost of each student in 2025 was $9,969, or $1.28 million.
“We’re carrying a lot of debt,” our City Council President Lora Wondolowski told the superintendent. “Just concerned how adding another bond is going to affect us as a city.”
On Feb. 10 in Montague, the FCTS presented a proposal to build a 211,075-square-foot vocational school — a 3.7-acre building 33% larger than the current vocational building. In the audience was Mayor Ginny Desorgher, who was quoted as saying “her city would also not be able to afford the (Tech) levy without an exclusion vote.”
Three weeks before the Tech ballot vote, I sent an email to city officials, urging them to “post something on its website” regarding the FCTS.
“This is a major financial undertaking for the city that should be vetted with taxpayers so that they know what they’re voting on,” I wrote. No informational session was held.
At the Oct. 6 election, the Tech school received 4,106 (55.5%) “yes” votes, versus 3,522 (44.5%) “no” votes. Five towns voted against it. In Greenfield, 52.5% of voters opted for “no.” Only 11.5% of our 13,852 voters bothered to vote. The percentage of voters who either didn’t know — or didn’t care — about the election was 88.5%. In Shelburne, where both the selectboard and the finance committee voted “no” on the school, 71% of voters said “no.”
Nine days after the vote, Greenfield elected officials faced constituents at a precinct communications session. Asked what bonding would cost the city, Finance Director Stephen Nembirkow responded: “Greenfield does hold a lot of debt — almost $60 million worth of total debt … We’re going to add the Tech school on top of it, which says $60 to $70 million. The Tech school can bond, pass through that cost to us. That’ll hit the general budget, so we’ll have to allocate money: $1.9 million a year … Secondarily, the city can do an override, which then basically allows the city to add the cost of this Tech school to the tax rate for 30 years. That will require a vote of the citizens … We are on the hook for that money.”
Former Mayor Bill Martin warned: “In the past five years, all of the tech schools that have been built in Massachusetts have doubled or tripled their original estimate. There was a school in eastern Mass. that had similar square footage and an almost similar number, of $265 million. They just finished at a little over $600 million. If there’s any reflection of what happened to them, that’s going to happen to us; it’s really beyond the pale for Franklin County to afford.”
Mayor Desorgher added: “I was at several meetings and many intelligent people were sitting in a room and thinking, ‘We need this Tech school, and none of us know how we’re going to afford it’ … My goal this week is working on getting more money. I have a very interesting fact that I would like you all to know so that you can lobby your representative … I was in touch with Jo Comerford and I said, ‘We need more money for this Tech school.’ That formula needs to change because there’s a bias in it against tech schools.”
Six days later, the mayor introduced at the City Council meeting a three-page letter to be sent by the City Council president to the governor and our state legislative delegation, describing the FCTS building as a “looming fiscal crisis” which “threatens to overwhelm our taxpayers.” The 19 member towns “do not have the deep tax bases required to absorb these overages … our towns will be forced into debt exclusions … which will inevitably lead to cuts in critical municipal services” including our school budgets.
Greenfield’s “looming crisis” lobbying is a day late and $56 million short. Why did the City Council and mayor wait nine months to sound the alarm? Why were voters not warned ahead of the vote? When I asked in advance for a public forum, I got silence.
Now every property taxpayer in 19 towns is harnessed to this “unsustainable debt burden” for the next three decades.
Al Norman’s Pushback column is published in the Recorder every first and third Wednesday of the month.