Dissatisfied with the Pioneer Valley Regional School District’s budget proposal for the 2019 to 2020 year, officials in the district’s four towns hope to block the budget by complicating the Town Meeting approval process.
All four towns are voting on the school budget in special meetings Monday at 7 p.m.
■Leyden’s meeting is at Town Hall.
■Bernardston’s meeting is at Bernardston Elementary School.
■Northfield’s meeting is at Pioneer Valley Regional School.
■Warwick’s meeting is at Town Hall.
Holding all four town meetings at the same time ensures that each town’s vote will have equal influence. To reject the school budget, at least two of the four towns must vote against it.
By contrast, when annual town meetings are spread over a period of several weeks, as is typically the case, and the first three towns approve the budget, the fourth accepts it by default, regardless of how it votes. This year, the Pioneer School Committee’s financial planning was delayed by the closure of Leyden’s Pearl Rhodes Elementary School, inciting the need for specially scheduled meetings.
Pioneer is proposing a budget of $14,224,966. This is a 1.14 percent increase over this year’s budget — the lowest increase any school district in western Massachusetts is proposing this year and the lowest Pioneer has ever proposed, Finance Director Tanya Gaylord said.
But the selectboards and finance committees are not satisfied with it, and have devised ways to block it on Monday.
Their plan — which they devised during a June 10 joint meeting — is to amend the budget numbers.
Even if the amended budget numbers pass in all four towns, the school’s budget will fail because the towns have no legal authority to manage the school district’s finances. They can only approve or reject budget requests. Approval of an amended number is legally the same as rejecting the request.
If the budget fails, Pioneer will go into the new fiscal year, starting July 1, with no budget. In that case, the state will impose a “one-twelfth” budget, in which the towns pay for the schools on a month-by-month basis, calculated as one-twelfth of the previous year’s budget. If the towns and the school district cannot agree on a budget by Dec. 1, the state will simply impose a budget, and the towns will be required to pay for it, regardless of any Town Meeting decisions.
The schools, under a one-twelfth budget, will start the year by losing about $9,900, Gaylord said. Without cash in-hand, the district will not be able to buy supplies in bulk, and will not be eligible for discounts on insurance costs, she noted.
Bernardston, Northfield and Warwick have articles on their Monday town meeting warrants regarding whether to pay their portions of Pioneer Superintendent Jon Scagel’s salary for the 2019 to 2020 school year.
This article, like the budget amendments, is a covert way of rejecting the budget. Legally, it amounts to modifying the school district’s budget request, which the towns do not have authority to do. If a town votes to reject the superintendent’s salary, it will legally qualify as rejecting the budget proposal.
Scagel signed a contract with the School Committee in February for five years, with annual 5 percent raises starting the second year. Town officials have criticized the contract — in joint meetings, at School Committee meetings and in Town Hall meetings — on the basis that Scagel does not have a long enough history with Pioneer or sufficient experience as a superintendent to justify such a long contract, and that a five-year commitment effectively blocks Pioneer from reducing administrative costs by merging with another school district.
The idea to present Scagel’s salary as a Town Meeting-votable decision came from Warwick Town Coordinator David Young, who is also on the Pioneer School Committee. In conversations with the Warwick Selectboard, Young acknowledged that the article could not directly invalidate Scagel’s contract.
However, Young has suggested that the article might have a roundabout effect of invalidating the contract if it causes Pioneer’s budget proposal to fail. He said there is case law to show that a failure to fund a multi-year contract in its first year invalidates the whole contract.
Northfield’s town attorney disagreed, according to Northfield Finance Committee Chairwoman Lois Stearns.
Of the other articles on the Town Meeting warrants, the most notable is one on forming a “regional school district planning committee” with representatives from Pioneer and the Gill-Montague Regional School District. Ideas of merging the two districts have been discussed by stakeholders in all six towns, but a merger would not necessarily be the committee’s goal, said Bernardston Finance Committee Chairwoman Jane Dutcher. Rather, she said, the planning committee would investigate options for both districts to economize by expanding, collaborating with other school districts or perhaps merging to some extent.
The normal procedure for forming the planning committee requires approval from all relevant selectboards and school committees. So far, all the groups have approved it, except the Pioneer School Commmittee. Town Meeting votes will allow the towns to bypass the School Committee, Dutcher said.
■$200 to reimburse a Franklin County Technical School Committee member’s travel expenses, and $600 for the three members on the Pioneer School Committee.
■A 3 percent excise tax on any room in a bed and breakfast, hotel, lodging house, short-term rental or motel.
■$3,000 for rental expenses of storing Historical Commission artifacts.
■$25,000 for maintenance, utilities and insurance of the Pearl Rhodes building.
■$20,500 for preparatory work for a solar installation at the town landfill.
■To adopt a resolution in support of changing the state flag and seal.
■To correct a typo in the Annual Town Meeting warrant, thus increasing the Recreation Commission’s budget by $141.
■To establish the annual spending limits for the Highway Department’s bucket truck, the summer playground program, the Council on Aging’s breakfast and lunch program, and the recycling fund.
■$5,000 to buy a used police cruiser.
■$8,000 for school planning assistance.
Reach Max Marcus at mmarcus@recorder.com or 413-772-0261 ex 261.