WARWICK — Annual Town Meeting is this Monday, 7 p.m. at Town Hall. A budget of $2,015,918 is being proposed, but a confluence of complications at the Pioneer Valley Regional School District means that Warwick’s budget will likely have to be revisited in another Town Meeting next month.
Apart from those school financial matters and the routine funding authorizations, the warrant includes notable question on by-right marijuana cultivation, and a petition to change the state flag and seal.
The $2,015,918 budget on the warrant would be a 5.5-percent increase over this year’s $2,004,804 budget. The tax rate would decrease from this year’s $21.24 per $1,000 to $20.50.
But like the other towns of the Pioneer school district, Warwick expects its assessed school costs to go down, which would affect the town budget accordingly. What’s happening is that the School Committee is still evaluating the financial repercussions of the recent decision to close Leyden’s Pearl Rhodes Elementary School. Once that is ironed out, the School Budget Subcommittee expects the towns’ costs for the 2019-2020 school year to come out lower than they were originally assessed.
So, to give the School Committee the extra time it needs, the Pioneer towns’ finance committees and selectboards are recommending their town meeting voters either defer on the school budget or vote it down. The plan, as discussed at a recent joint meeting of the finance committees and selectboards, is to come back for special town meetings in June, by which point the schools’ financial situation will have stabilized somewhat.
Warwick in particular is giving its residents an option to challenge the five-year contract given to Pioneer Superintendent Jon Scagel. Officials in all four Pioneer towns have expressed disappointment since the contract was signed in February, mostly on the grounds that the contract is overly generous for the relatively inexperienced Scagel and for Pioneer’s financial situation, and that it will prevent Pioneer from pursuing meaningful merger options with nearby school districts. (Tentative discussions with Gill-Montague Regional School District are ongoing.)
Warwick has gotten a legal opinion that the contract can still be undone if at least two of the towns refuse to fund it, Town Coordinator David Young said. He added that Bernardston may be attempting something similar. Northfield’s Town Meeting warrant doesn’t have anything like that. Leyden hasn’t finished its warrant yet.
The marijuana warrant article would make marijuana cultivation legal by-right in Warwick, effectively streamlining the legal process that a prospective grower would go through by removing the need for town approval. (A grower would still need approval from the state.)
Town Coordinator Young said that a dispensary in Warwick is unlikely, considering the remoteness of the town; but public opinion in town seems receptive to growers.
So far only one person has approached the Selectboard to request a letter of non-opposition for a potential growing operation, Young said. But it raised the issue that, if a town government employee ever wanted to grow, the non-opposition letter would be a conflict of interest. The by-right rule would resolve that.
Warwick is one of several Franklin County towns this year giving residents an option to formally support changes to the state’s official iconography. Warwick’s particular warrant article is to support a petition calling for changes to the flag and seal.
Reach Max Marcus at mmarcus@recorder.com or 413-772-0261 ex 261.