HANSON – The outcome of Hanson’s special Town Meeting on June 17 will hinge on how effectively the sole article is explained to voters as to exactly what “yes” and “no” votes mean, and will do, regarding the fiscal 2025 budget and the W-H school assessment’s effect on it.
Select Board, in an emergency meeting on Thursday, May 30 voted final approval of the warrant article, contingent on minor language changes being made, for the June 17 special Town Meeting Town Administrator Lisa Green attended the session remotely via phone.
A lack of clarity, particularly centering on the explanation of the article which allows voters to have another conversation about the fiscal 2025 budget, which passed May 6, but after the May 18 Town Election result shooting down the Proposition 2 ½ override, there remains a $350,212 budget that has already been established with the deficit, and asks them to examine an insert outlining cuts the Finance Committee is working to recommend. The third option would be the discussion of other amendments from the floor.
“The article itself is just a recitation of what we already have, and what we have every year as the budget item in the warrant,” Select Board Chair Laura FitzGerald-Kemmett said.
“If they vote no on this article, it means we do not reconsider the budget, we do not talk about it anymore and then we have a $350,000 shortfall that we have to figure out on our side how to resolve and it goes back to the School Committee for a third assessment and a super Town Meeting,” Board member Joe Weeks said. “I understand that it’s frustrating to talk about this now, but I’m telling you right now, there’s a whole bunch of people saying ‘I’m voting no for this because they think no means [it rejects the assessment].”
“This is not clear,” Vice Chair Ann Rein said, agreeing with Weeks’ point. “People out there think no means no and it doesn’t. Voting yes means we stick with the budget as voted in May and they don’t get it.”
FitzGerald-Kemmett said people have to come not thinking what they want to vote against, but what they will vote for.
Both FitzGerald-Kemmett and Select Board Administrative Assistant Lynn McCowell reviewed the budget article and Town Counsel Kate Feodorff was asked to do the same and made some minor changes.
Noting her own suggestion at the last meeting that two warrant articles be used, FitzGerald-Kemmett said that after speaking to Feodoroff, who thought the approach would be more confusing to voters, it was decided that the article’s wording and an insert covering the board and Finance Committee’s recommendations, would “really be driving it and the way that it would be voted.”
Feodoroff, who joined the meeting late via Zoom, also “very strongly counselled” the Select Board that a single article was preferable to avoid confusion as to what voters would be asked to decide according to FitzGerald-Kemmett. Before she did join the meeting, FitzGerald-Kemmett suggested any tweaks to be made be done that night.
“We need to have this on lock-down so the warrant can be delivered by the constable tomorrow morning [Friday, May 31],” she said.
Member Ed Heal had already voiced concern over the final paragraph: “The purpose of this article is to deliberate on the budget as a whole to determine whether or not to ‘fully [missing word]’” and insert the word ‘fund,’ “the Whitman-Hanson regional School budget,” FitzGerald-Kemmett read. The board voted to make that change.
“I’m still kind of caught off-guard,” Weeks said, noting that on May 30, they discussed three options that do different things. “If we were to just vote ‘yes’ on this article, given that we have three options drastically different things. … I wish we just had something that says, a ‘yes vote does this.’”
He asked if the votes would cover two options.
FitzGerald-Kemmett said there would be just one vote.
“To approve the budget as it is, as it was voted at the last Town Meeting, and that is the way Mr. Kealy’s motion will be updated,” she said. “We are keeping the W-H regional school budget as the budget that was voted at the last Town Meeting.”
Heal asked whether it makes sense to declare it to be a yes vote.
“How do you get to a vote?” he asked. “How do you get to item one?”
“Through the motion,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said. “Mr. Kealy will read the motion.”
“How do you get to item one?” Heal asked.
“It’s through the motion,” FitzGerald-Kemmett replied. “If option one carries, there is no need for further discussion because we [would have] voted to stay the course. If option one doesn’t carry, then we go to Option two, which is the potential service cuts that will be outlined, but not necessarily recommended by us or the Finance Committee.”
To help clarify it further, Weeks said “If you vote ‘yes’ on this, then Option 1 is going to carry.”
FitzGerald-Kemmett said the article would not require multiple passes if Article 1 passes with the motion that the town will not back away from officials’ stance that they will only fund what Town Meeting has already voted.
“In other words, we’re saying we’re not changing anything,” she said. “We had to get together. We had to present other options, but what we’re moving tonight is ‘stay the course, then there’s no further discussion needed, and then we adjourn.”
Feodoroff, joining the discussion said if Town Meeting does nothing than the budget is approved.
“Since they sent that assessment back, if we do nothing, then their budget is approved,” she added. “We have 45 days – use them … without having a source of funding, you become obligated legally to fund the whole budget. … So you have to do something.”
The failed override would have created additional revenue capacity, but since it failed, Feodoroff explained, officials need to bear in mind that a different group of people show up at Town Meeting and would be well within their rights to vote to fully fund the schools. The situation demands that it be counter-balanced with budget cuts.
The Finance Committee is meeting to determine where they would prefer those cuts should be made.
“We don’t want people just randomly deciding they want to cut the whole thing out of police or the whole thing out of fire, without knowing what the impact is,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said.
By presenting a budget and moving it the exact same way that you did [at the May 6 Town Meeting] – the exact same budget, with not even a period changed and is resubmitted to the schools – it reaffirms what you did and that budget schools.
“But the option has to be given to the voters to make a different decision,” she said.
Rein confirmed that “staying the course means the 5-percent increase, and that’s it.”
“In order to revisit the budget, you have to say this language that’s in Article 1,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said. “It allows the conversation about any potential change to the budget.”
Weeks summed up that the average voter is going to want to know, if they’re voting “no” on this, they’ll want to know what kicks it back to the School Committee for the potential of a lower assessment.
“People that want to keep the assessment, know they are going to vote ‘yes,’ is what I’m guessing,” he said. “The people who vote “no” will want to kick it back to the School Committee for the potential for a lower assessment. … I’m just hearing a lot of people saying they want to kick it back.”
FitzGerald-Kemmett said the only way the issue avoids going to a super town meeting is if it’s voted to appropriate more money for the school district budget.