HANSON – After a lengthy discussion with town finance officials and two members of the School Committee, the Select Board on Tuesday, June 11, approved cuts to the budget [See list, page 15], including reductions in hours to several town employees, which will go before voters at next week’s special Town Meeting.
Town Meeting will be held at 6:30 p.m., on Monday, June 17 in the Hanson Middle School auditorium, with accommodations for an overflow crowd, if needed.
The warrant will present two articles to voters. Article 1 is the May 6 vote including the 5-percent increase in the school district operating assessment. Article 2, should Town Meeting decide they want to fund the school district at a higher level, makes the cuts recommended by the Finance Committee.
“If you want to keep the budget the way that it is, the motion is going to be to accept the reduced budget for W-H Regional Schools,” Select Board Chair Laura FitzGerald-Kemmett said. “If you don’t want to stay the course and you want to make cuts, then you vote no [on Article 1] and vote yes to Article 2.”
Town Counsel has worked with the Select Board on the wording of the articles, but FitzGerald-Kemmett agreed it is a difficult concept.
“It is confusing, I wanted to do it as multiple articles,” FitzGerald-Kemmett. “But we were told, no, we shouldn’t do that, so we’re taking the advice of counsel.”
Moderator Sean Kealy will work with Town Counsel on an explanation that will make the meaning of the votes clear to voters, but it boils down to: “Instead of coming [to Town Meeting] thinking, what am I voting against, you’re coming to ask, which of these options am I coming to vote for?” FitzGerald-Kemmett said. “You vote yes to vote no.”
FitzGerald-Kemmett described the cuts as proposed by the Select Board/FinCom.
“We don’t have any discrepancies,” she said before the vote.
The reductions will be shown as Option 2 in the warrant.
Finance Committee Chair Kevin Sullivan listed the cuts he and Town Accountant Eric Kinsherf outlined, and the Select Board approved them by a 4-0 vote. Member Joe Weeks was absent from the meeting.
“The way I look at the warrant is this is an opportunity to amend those already voted on the budget,” Kincherf said, referring to the May 6 Town Meeting. “In order for us to fund the $372,141 for the W-H appropriation, the FinCom has recommended $207,194 in budget cuts, the use of an old article for purchase of the Sleeper Property for $126,000 and then the Local Aid, [state] Senate Ways and Means version, showed an extra $38,000 coming to Hanson.”
Those three revenue sources are being used to fund the school operating assessment appropriation as recommended by the Finance Committee.
“Obviously the Select Board can opine and weigh in,” Kinsherf said.
“I’m hoping we can align,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said. “That’s my ideal scenario, but I don’t know if it will happen.” The Select Board did vote in agreement with the Finance Committee recommendations.
“There seems to be a narrative that this can be done without a tax increase,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said. “Well, it certainly can, but it can’t be done without cuts.”
“We looked at spreading cuts across all the town departments with the exception of public safety,” Sullivan said.
The town is also looking to Beacon Hill, meanwhile, for an anticipated increase in Local Aid, but that has not yet settled out.
“It was a matter of the House and Senate coordinating and fine tuning, etc,” said FitzGerald-Kemmett. “That was going to be a boon to Hanson, potentially, if those numbers stuck for the increase in the reimbursements for busing and per-pupil of roughly $190,000.”
She said she reached out to School Committee Chair Beth Stafford to see if the budget could be reconsidered in light of that, but she said Stafford felt uncomfortable doing that because the numbers had not been locked down yet.
“[That] is understood, but if they are uncomfortable doing that, why would we be comfortable hedging a bet that we’re going to get that $38,000 [in Local Aid],” FitzGerald-Kemmett said.
“The honest answer is we need the money,” Kinsherf said. “The second answer is, I was looking at the history: unrestricted local aid was one number, the House reduces by $38,000 and the Senate increases it by $38,000, so it is a little bit a roll of the dice, but …”
“We were in a meeting today – part of the Association of Town Finance Officers in the state and the lieutenant governor and they seemed to think that was a certainty,” Sullivan said to finish the thought.
In terms of stabilization accounts for both the district and Hanson as well as the town’s free cash outlook, Kinsherf said there is $627,000 in unexpended free cash, but financial officers do not want to touch any of it because the towns fiscal 2025 operating budget used $794,000 in free cash and they have an eye on next year’s budget. While there is $227,000 in the school stabilization fund, but an October 2014, special Town Meeting voted that those funds must be used for capital projects only. The school district is also planning to have capital requests on this October’s special Town Meeting warrant, and using the school stabilization for that would save free cash.
The town also has to prepare for the January vote on the proposed South Shore Tech school project, Sullivan said.
The complete discussion can be viewed on the WHCA-TV YouTube channel and will be rebroadcast on the cable access channel.
“We’re going with the numbers we have here,” Sullivan said of the Finance Committee’s recommendation going into the special Town Meeting. “This is our best and final offer.”
Kealy suggested that someone be prepared to explain at Town Meeting why the town cannot touch free cash.
“At the current pace that were at, we’re looking at an override next year,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said. “If that override does not pass, this [budget problem] is just going to be a drop in the bucket on the cuts we’ll have to make – we’re going to eviscerate Town Hall … get ready for your worst-case scenario.”
She said she was not threatening.
“It’s just realistic,” she said. “It’s just the way it’s going to be, because we just don’t have that money anywhere else.”
FitzGerald-Kemmett said that was the thinking in both towns as they went with the 5-percent budget increase, with the rest dependent on an override, but Whitman’s Finance Committee then offered a free cash and stabilization proposal on Town Meeting floor.
“That was not what their accountant had suggested, what their Town Administrator had suggested, or what the Select Board had suggested because they’re looking at the same fiscal cliff we’re looking at next year – not the same dollar amount, but essentially the same severity.”
She said the Select Board has a responsibility to everyone in town to be fiscally prudent.
“This has been a very thoughtful analysis, involving weeks of department head, accountant, FinCom and [Town Administrator] Lisa Green’s involvement,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said. “This isn’t willy-nilly.”
School Committee member Hillary Kniffen reminded the Select Board that, should the schools be placed on a 1/12 budget in the event that the budget is not balanced after Town Meeting, the Commissioner of Education can set the budget – and can increase the budget from what the school district is now asking [see related story, page 1].
FitzGerald-Kemmett said the Select Board understands that, and suggested the School Committtee have someone available at Town Meeting to explain it to voters and answer their questions.
“There’s lots of grenades, with lots of pins to be pulled here,” she said. “At the end of the day, it’s up to the voters, but I do think it’s important that, when people make their vote that they understand there may be unintended consequences and what at first blush might look good may not get you what you were ultimately hoping to get with that vote.”