HANSON – While Whitman’s Select Board was hearing a list of consequences – including layoffs and shuttered departments – of a $63.5 million level-service fiscal 2025 school budget on Tuesday, March 26, Hanson officials were seeing the same handwriting on the wall, but a flicker of communication was being nursed into the flame of another joint meeting between town officials on Monday, April 1.
“We may get to a better point,” said Hanson Select Board Chair Laura FitzGerald-Kemmett. “It certainly can’t get worse. … There’s not a lot of town budget to slash.”
In the meantime, the Select Board reached the consensus that, if an override of Proposition 2 ½ is necessary, it would be a contingency school override, with dual budgets proposed at Town Meeting as Whitman is doing, allowing Town Clerk Elizabeth Sloan to have the ballot printed by April 12.
The W-H School Committee on Wednesday, March 20, certified the budget, first unveiled on Feb. 1, without any of the cuts discussed the previous week.
“After many conversations that [Whitman] Town Administrator Mary Beth Carter and myself had with Superintendent [of Schools Jeff Szymaniak], we really voiced our ability to afford 5 percent assessment [increase],” Town Administrator Lisa Green. They also met with Szymaniak and School Committee Chair Beth Stafford in which she and Carter reiterated the towns’ ability to afford only a 5 percent increase.
“I think we’re back where we said we were going to be last year,” said Finance Committee Chair Kevin Sullivan. “The schools are not willing to be a rational partner, in my opinion.”
He noted that financial consultant John Madden has been telling Hanson officials that a $5 million operational override has been needed to put the town on solid financial footing.
“I don’t know how this went from such a cordial relationship over the 12 years I’ve been doing this,” he said. “We’ve never had this kind of problem. … The math just doesn’t hold up in the long run.”
He said the choice comes down to playing a “dangerous game of chicken” with the entire process and see what happens, predicting there would be another override next year and another after that; or the town can try to reach an agreement with the district this year and go for an operational override next year for FY 2026.
He said the April 1 meeting should take place after the April 1 meeting.
“If we don’t do an override, the changes are fairly draconian,” said FitzGerald-Kemmett. “I’ll be quite honest, you’re looking at library, Town Hall employees, obviously, some fire and police would be impacted. I personally don’t even want to talk about those types of cuts. … We would be talking about absolutely crippling the operations at Town Hall.”
Most of the positions residents take for granted like a full-time Building Department, Conservation and then Board of Health would all be cut.
“Why do we have to cut on our side, when the School Department doesn’t have to cut on anything?” Select Board member David George asked.
“We are not the School Committee,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said.
While insisting she was not trying to be critical of Szymaniak or to take potshots at anyone, FitzGerald-Kemmett, she said the Select Board “could not have been clearer any earlier than we were this year” about Hanson’s financial situation.
The town could say no and include a budget with a 5-percent in the warrant and present the school budget as contingent on an override happening. That is the avenue Whitman is taking.
Failing passage of the school budget on the town side and an override fails, cuts would be forced. If an override passes, the school budget would be funded.
FitzGerald-Kemmett said her feeling is that things would fall somewhere in the middle.
“Even if they come down a little, we literally cannot afford any more than 5 percent,” she said. “We weren’t exaggerating, we weren’t being dramatic. We cannot afford any more than that.”
Even at a 5-percent assessment increase, the town would be making cuts and “limiting spending severely,” she reminded the board. “What we’re saying is all we have is 5 percent and even that was a stretch.”
The Hanson Select Board had initially told the School Committee that all it was comfortable in allowing very moderate growth – and even negotiation with the unions – was 3.8 percent, FitzGerald-Kemmett said.
“With this 5 percent, we now have to try to deal in good faith with the unions and say we don’t know what our financial situation is going to look like next year,” she said. “It’s not a great place to be as we enter into negotiations with all of our unions this year.”
Green said it was very unfortunate after attending the School Committee meeting last week.
“To see that the committee did not take into consideration any of Superintendent Szymaniak’s scenarios for lowering the assessment, which would have included using some of their excess and deficiency and circuit breaker, cutting some positions to bring the assessments down,” Green said. “They were starting to go in the right direction, but they got to 6.69 percent, a 7.68 and a 5 percent scenario.”
The Committee’s 8-1 vote took all reductions off the table and was opposed by Whitman member Fred Small. Member Michelle Bourgelas of Hanson was absent.
Green said the School Committee’s vote leaves them needing to close the funding gap and that “an override is one of our options.”
“It’s not out of the question [that the School Committee could make cuts], but we have a very short runway right now,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said. “We’ve got to make a decision and lock down our warrant, really, within the next week in order for us to be able to do this.”
Hanson’s assessment increase went back to the original 10.2 percent and Whitman’s to a 11.88 percent increase.
Green has since been working with Town Accountant Eric Kinsherf to determine what that type of assessment means to the towns – roughly $15,532,479 as an assessment for Hanson, and about $20 million for Whitman. Hanson’s free cash totals only $1.486 million.
“That brings us to a shortfall of $1,579,947,” she said. “Obviously, we don’t have enough free cash to cover that amount.”
Hanson needs to find $723,176 to balance.
Green said a chart is posted on the town website: hanson.ma-gov, that gives residents an idea of the impact of an override on their real estate personal property tax based on the average assessed value – $499,873 based on FY 2024 figures. Such a home would be a tax bill of $6,688 or about $179.75 more annually. The chart covers tax changes connected to an override on property valued from $250,000 all the way to $1.5 million.
George asked if the school district had any free cash. Green noted the districts doesn’t have enough free cash to cover it. The School Committee typically cannot empty their excess and deficiency account, even as they often contribute some of that money to help balance the budget, because laws mandating the schools educate all children ages 2.5 to 22 means they need to keep some cash in reserve in case a family with a special needs child moves into the district.
Szymaniak had suggested in one of his scenarios that $250,000 of the approximately $700,000 in E&D toward lowering the school budget deficit.
“I’m a neophyte to all of this, but it just seems to me to be extremely – I don’t even know what the word is … arrogant comes to mind – to ask the towns to cut other budgets and not even take a glance at what they could have cut,” said Select Board member Ann Rein. “I don’t understand that kind of attitude, especially in this day and age, when everything has done nothing but go up and we’re just supposed to pull it out of somewhere.”
She said non-instructional staff hired with one-time funds should go – “I don’t care what they do at the school,” Rein said. “Some of them could go.”
FitzGerald-Kemmett said the schools don’t have to be told where to cut, but they should have to make cuts.
She pointed out that Szymaniak had presented several scenarios in which some programs would be cut and some E&D and circuit breakers funds would be transferred to help close the budget gap.
FitzGerald-Kemmett said there will be more discussion between the two towns and the district, and that she feels hopeful that the dollar amount might be reduced, but that is hard to say by how much.
“We are dealing with the most severe case … and without any further movement from the School Committee and we’re trying to make a decision,” she said. “What are our options?”
“Hope is not getting us anywhere,” Rein said.
“I just think it’s funny that they hired a lot of people over there that are not teachers that they don’t want to lay off,” George. “They got something that they can’t afford, just like if I bought something I can’t afford, I’m going to get rid of it.”
He said the district has people on the payroll they obviously can’t afford and they are trying to retain them.
“They’ve taken a stand … they’re doing what they believe is their mission … what they were elected to do and our job is to respond and say we are responsible for managing the town’s budget,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said. “If you want that money we have to go to an override, and it has to be for the schools because we don’t need it for the town budget.”
She called Whitman Select Board Chair Dr. Carl Kowalski and Stafford to see if there was any potential that groups from either town or the district could come together and discuss the budget and it was agreed to, with the town administrators, Szymaniak, Kowalski, Stafford and herself to have such a discussion April 1.
“I don’’t know if that will work, but I’m willing to try anything,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said.
Vice Chair Joe Weeks said he is struggling with the issue.
“One of the things I’m struggling with is how it, ironically affects the kids that we’re trying to advocate for,” he said, noting that a lot of people will end up in a difficult position. “We go to the ballot with something like this, you’re putting a lot of stock in that it’s going to pass. … I just don’t like being in a position like that in the 11th hour.”
He said his main concern is what happens if it does not pass at the ballot.
“It really is an all-or-nothing scenario,” he said.