The W-H Regional Agreement Committee on Wednesday, April 16, held further discussions about non-mandated busing, but ended up voting to leave the transportation section as-is for now.
During the session Chair Hillary Kniffen, she asked for feedback on the discussions at its last meeting. In February, she had asked members to present their ideas or opinions about revising that portion of the Regional Agreement.
“I think I know, based on what I’ve watched and seen, but for the record for people who are going to watch this meeting,” she said she’d like to hear them.
Hanson Select Board Chair Laura FitzGerald-Kemmett said her board has talked about it multiple times.
“The board’s view is that they do not want to present any Regional Agreement that includes this,” she said. “It doesn’t mean we wouldn’t talk about it at some other point, but now is not the point and now is not the time.”
FitzGerald-Kemmett said she felt the committee has made a lot of progress on a number of points (and) some members of her board feel particularly passionate about non-mandated busing, in particular.
“To the point where – we didn’t take an official vote on this, but we did discuss it,” she said. “And I’ve had feedback from people that they wouldn’t even be willing to present any agreement that would include this.”
Kniffen agreed.
“We’ve made a lot of progress with knocking things off and I don’t think that all that work should be in vain,” she said of any effort to revise non-mandated busing regulations now.
Whitman Select Board Justin Evans said he brought it before that board before the last Regional Agreement session.
“They were, as you could imagine, in favor of making the switch and simplifying the transportation assessment process … even if we remove the change in how we assess now, there could still be a benefit to changing the way we send the assessments to the towns,” he said. “Even if the same calculation is performed, including that in the one assessment that gets sent to the towns.”
In that case, even if the amount in dollars were to go up the first year, there wouldn’t be the threat of voting it down.
“I’m focused more on the financial savings,” he said.
Hanson Finance Committee member Steve Amico said his committee has also discussed the issue and “are kind of in concert with the Select Board.”
“It was a discussion, but it wasn’t anything that was in-depth,” he said.
Whitman Finance Chair Kathleen Ottina said that, with a 50-percent rookie committee, so she said she simply informed them that there is a learing curve to understanding transportation costs.
Her committee has also not taken a vote.
Kniffen, who said she attended the last School Committee virtually, said her understanding was that the towns were split.
“I don’t want to make a Regional Agreement where one town feels strongly against something, [and] the other town feels strongly for something, because then it’s not going to go anywhere,” Kniffen said. “I don’t think that’s wise at this point.”
They had already added a provision into the Regional Agreement to look at it every three to five years, and determine of further revisions are neeeded.
“Right now is not the time to say, ‘Oh, and we’re going to add more costs. “That’s not the way to go to get anything sold,” she said. “I’m not comfortable saying, “Oh, we’re going ahead and changing things.”
“No matter how you clean up that language, the end result is convoluted,” Ottina said. “You’ve got one way of assessing mandated costs, and you’ve got a different way of assessing non-mandated costs.”
School Committee member Rosemary Connolly, however, said the message was clear that the message that came back from the School Committee meeting Kniffen referred to was that “they didn’t understand the breakout and the financial impact to the towns,” which is what the School Committee needs to be voting on the breakout and the total financial impact for them to revisit.
She maintained she would not be “budged for a second for political gains.”
Kniffen said the spilt between the towns on the issue was the reason she was not asking for a vote and did not think the RA committee should move forward with it.
“I think to keep insinuating that ‘people from the other town don’t understand,’ is incredibly insulting,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said. “Just because we don’t agree with a proposal doesn’t mean that we don’t understand it.”
FitzGerald-Kemmett maintained that she hasn’t said the issue is “forever off the table,” but there needs to be some recognition – if the towns are supposed to be partners – that Hanson has had “ a very tough pill to swallow” with the change to the statutory assessment formula.
“We can get into whether it should have been done earlier and all that,” she said. “[It] doesn’t really matter because that’s where we’re at now, and I can tell you it will detonate the relationship.”
She said she hears what Connolly is saying and appreciates her passion, but added, “My modus operando is, ‘do you want to be right or do you want to get what you want?’ If you want to be right, beat your breast and go on soapboxes and all that other stuff. If you ultimately want to continue with a partnership … then there does have to be some recognition that you can represent your consitituents, but do it in a way that does no harm.”
She said the $50,000 difference at stake is not a question of bankrupting one town for another.
Ottina said the Regional Agreement Committee has accomplished a lot so far.
“As much as I would like to propose language change for Section 5—Transportation, it’s not going to go anywhere. I’m pragmatic, but down the road we have to be careful about leaving non-mandated busing as a target on the warrant.”
She said it either has to become part of the schools’ operatin budget or, in future years, it’s a sitting duck.