WHITMAN — The Select Board on Tuesday, Feb. 21 discussed the timing of a special Town Election in which to vote on a proposed new Whitman Middle School, as is required by the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA).
Chair Randy LaMattina provided an update on the Whitman Middle School project, forecast to cost about $127.5 million for a grade five through eight school with an auditorium. The town’s portion is estimated in the range of $67.1 million to $73.1 million, depending on the MSBA reimbursement.
A website is being set up by the owner’s project manager, dedicated to straight information, with a lot of the documents presented at the Building Committee meetings posted to it, LaMattina said. The board voted to permit IT Director Josh MacNeil to link that site to the town’s website. MacNeil and Finance Committee member Kathleen Ottina have also been added to the Building Committee.
MSBA is looking to the town to hold a special Town Meeting that would later go to a ballot initiative on the project in November 2023, LaMattina said.
“What was discovered was there was no funding source within the feasibility study for [the special election],” he said. “We need to make arrangements to have that placed in the Town Clerk’s budget line.”
LaMattina said he discussed with the Building Committee that November Town Meetings and special elections are not really the norm.
Former Town Administrator Frank Lynam said the town has about $23,000 on hand in voter reimbursement from the state, which could certainly be a source from which to pay for a meeting and election. It would not require further appropriation.
“Is there a time frame in November they’re looking at?” Select Board member Justin Evans asked, noting that since there is a presidential primary in March anyway, it might make more sense to hold a special election at that time, since that is a high-voter turnout canvass.
“How specific are the MSBA guidelines?” Evans asked.
“What we have is, ‘Any time in November,’” LaMattina said.
“We will have an election already, being held in Town Hall which will probably have a higher turnout,” Evans said. “It makes sense to me to run a second ballot alongside the primary ballot, so every voter comes and grabs two and casts a yes or no on a new middle school.”
Evans said he wasn’t certain how a March 2024 ballot question would impact the school timeline.
LaMattina said he would send the appropriate emails to explore that option.
In other business, Whitman needs to use all of its renewable revenue, School Committee member Dawn Byers said during the public forum, prepared remarks about the town’s levy capacity.
“We are not doing that right now, from what I see,” she said “When you, the Board of Selectmen vote to set the tax rate and the tax levy in the fall, if you do so, and it is not at the full 2.5 percent as permitted by Mass. General Law, then the difference is called the excess levy capacity,” she said.
She recalled that she had stood at the podium in March 2019 to ask questions about a revenue problem, when residents were told that the town faced, when in fact, it was related to the tax levy revenue collections. Byers pointed to an excess levy of about $350,000 available and former Town Administrator Frank Lynam made corrections and was able to collect it.
“We see this online in the Department of Revenue Certified Data,” she said. The Madden report also referenced the correction done in 2020, Byers noted. “This is one more indication of Whitman’s need to use all of its available renewable revenue to balance its budget and other obligations.”
She also recounted how the Select Board approved a tax levy with only $10,000 remaining, and in 2022, that amount was $18,000. “[That’s] a major improvement, however it doesn’t erase the collection deficit from prior years totaling more than $4 million in tax revenue not collected,” she said. “Something looks off this year, as well. The excess is up to $278,000.”
Board Vice Chair Dan Salvucci reminded Byers that the board routinely votes for a property tax factor of one, meaning businesses and homeowners pay the same tax rate as recommended by the Board of Assessors.
Lynam explained that the excess levy is established when the assessor prepares the tax status for the town with the recap sheet used to calculate an estimated levy.
“The actual levy is not calculated until they receive all the certified values from Patriot and they complete all of the reviews in their office to enter into the DOR gateway system,” he said.
The DOR calculates the numbers for us. At the time this year’s special Town Meeting convened, the town didn’t know what the levy was. Two weeks before the tax classification hearing the town was reported to be $268,000 over the levy limit.
“We have no control over what is calculated until it’s presented to this board,” Lynam said, adding that there are methods that can be used to capture that additional levy. Typically towns will underestimate revenues in an effort to increase the amount of the levy to back into the total number. “But in this particular instance, we didn’t know what that number was,” he said. “I’d love to be able to capture it, but I’d have to have the tools to do it.”
LaMattina said Byers had mentioned the issue before and asked Lynam to explain 2013 again – the year National Grid caused a ballooning of its personal property taxes.
Lynam said the town had been struggling to come up with numbers then, too, while dealing with a payment on the police station inside the levy. When he plans a budget, he said he asks the assessor for estimates of growth and numbers for the increase in the levy on Proposition 2 ½.
“In 2013, we were told our growth was … $240,000,” he said. “No matter how we looked at it, those were the numbers we had. We didn’t see the $1.1 million until the night of the classification hearing. … I was really taken aback by that number. It was a huge number. We were actually stunned.”
The funds were all in utilities, which changed last year, which used to send a letter to the town stating increases in assets and personal property. That became the basis for the tax, according to Lynam. The letters, date-stamped in January, were never presented to the town through the entire budget cycle.
“We had no idea that kind of growth was out there,” he said. “We didn’t know about that until it was too late to do anything with it.”
It was personal property growth that best estimates showed it would be gone in six to eight years, but it increases real estate assessments increase to maintain the levy when the personal property values drop.
“There’s no vote by anyone, there’s no action by anyone, it’s just a consequence of balances,” he said. “There’s no provision for reducing your assessments unless all of the numbers drop in value. It was an unfortunate situation. It was crazy, actually.”
Select Board member Shawn Kain said he would be looking into the issue and said he appreciated her willingness to ask hard questions.
To help the town recoup needed revenue, Byers has also suggested the town consider increasing the lease on the Self Help Inc.-operated Head Start program building opposite Whitman Park at 168 Whitman Ave.
Self Help is a nonprofit agency operated out of Brockton that also manages a fuel assistance program among others.
She noted the property could be valued at potentially $1 million.
“Don’t get me wrong, it’s a fantastic program,” Byers said. “It’s one of six locations in southeastern Mass., licenced by DEEC and supports low-income families throughout the year. You will not find a greater supporter of early childhood education than myself – I’ve gone on record about that.” But, she said, her concern is not about the programs provided by Self Help to the community, but whether the town can afford to “give away a building for free.”
Byers said the building is a valuable revenue stream the town may be letting slip away while telling taxpayers the town can’t afford other areas of a budget.