BARRE — In Barre, the school budget now has four “bottom lines.” Two are real numbers, and two that represent dueling opinions expressed by members of a finance committee that just deadlocked over an administrative proposal to spend $58.9 million to run the local school system during the coming fiscal year.
Thursday night’s 3-3 vote left the committee unable to make a recommendation to the school board that will consider the budget when it meets again on Wednesday.
It also dinged Superintendent Chris Hennessey’s expressed hope the board will quickly unite behind a spending plan he said administrators felt “duty-bound” to present.
“We’re bringing forward a budget that meets the needs of our kids, families and our communities,” Hennessey told the committee.
The assertion came even as the committee — composed of four board members and two citizens — was absorbing fresh estimates that suggest approval of the recommended budget would trigger near-19-cent increases in the education tax rates paid by homeowners in Barre and Barre Town.
Most of those projected increases are attributable to just released numbers that suggest Vermont’s housing market remains red-hot.
Barely two years removed from a reappraisal that reset the value of all properties in Barre Town, the community’s common level of appraisal dropped from 95.87% to 86.93% of fair market value. Based on a formula the state uses to ensure towns pay their fair share to the Education Fund, a previously projected 5.8-cent increase in Barre Town’s homestead rate just ballooned to 18.9 cents.
Barre’s last reappraisal was in 2006, and its next won’t be completed until 2026. In the last year, the city’s CLA dropped from 82.76% to 76.62% of fair market value, triggering a corresponding increase in the tax rate projection that was shared with the committee. A previously forecast 6.8-cent rate increase — one that assumed no change in the city’s CLA — has been replaced with a projected 18.6-cent spike.
Both projected rate increases would have surged past 20 cents if not for a provision of a new law — Act 127 — that, among other things, caps increases in homestead tax rates at 5%, as the state phases in a new student weighting formula that, due to its demographics, benefits the Barre district.
The cap is applied to equalized rates for districts before CLA adjustments are made for individual towns.
According to the latest projections, the CLA-adjusted rate will increase 13.2% in Barre and 15.58% in Barre Town.
So what’s the bottom line? Technically, there are two.
There’s the $58.9 million figure that Hennessey will ask the board to place on the Town Meeting Day ballot at its Wednesday meeting. It’s one that includes grant monies that don’t affect property taxes, and are expected to drop as pandemic-related federal funding goes away. The comparable budget finally approved by Barre voters last year was $55.6 million. That’s a year-over year increase of roughly $3.3 million, or nearly 5.9%.
Then there’s the budget’s other bottom line — the one the board actually controls, most frequently talks about, and is paid for by property taxes.
Based on the administrative proposal that will be presented to the board without the committee’s recommendation, the operating budget would climb to $55.4 million — an increase of about $5.8 million, or 11.6%.
Most of that proposed increase — more than $4.3 million — reflects hikes in wages and benefits. That number reflects recently negotiated labor contracts for teachers and para-educators; increases afforded administrators and other non-contract employees; and the cost of eight of the 15 positions that were created with federal money the district is losing.
Hennessey said those positions are needed in a demographically challenged district, as are four others he hopes to retain using separate federal grant money.
The administrative proposal provoked a sometimes-spirited discussion that saw School Director Sonya Spaulding briefly clash with Barre Town resident Jeff Blow, and offer her “bottom line” that was at odds with one supplied by School Director Paul Malone.
Spaulding chairs the committee, and Malone is a member who said he is uncomfortable with an administrative proposal that could be reduced, in his view.
Malone said he was concerned about the outsized rate hikes the budget would require with the 5% cap, and is more worried about what others described as the “fiscal cliff” the district could face in five years.
“The bottom line is: This is not a sustainable track,” Malone told fellow committee members.
Spaulding pushed back. She offered a blunt defense of a school spending proposal she argued was a reasonable response to years of “kicking the can down the road” and under-funding education in the interest of affordability.
“Now is the time we get to correct that,” she said, referring to the added tax capacity the Barre district will receive under Act 127.
“The reality is our kids need what our kids need, and are we going to err on the side of: ‘Oh, we have to do what makes taxpayers happy,’ or are we going to err on the side of: ‘This is what our students need?’” she asked. “I personally would rather err on the side of what our students need and try to find a way to find a budget that works for both our students and taxpayers.”
While the latest tax rate projections arguably make that harder, Spaulding suggested the choice was simple.
“We can’t keep worrying about ‘this is too much, this is too much’ because, guess what? It’s not enough for our kids,” she said. “That’s the bottom line.”
Spaulding’s comments came amid concerns the district was both spending too much and too little; skepticism the proposed budget would pass given the revised tax rate projections; and the suggestion the board’s ability to blunt those increases is beyond limited.
School Director Sarah Pregent, acknowledged the projected tax increases were “daunting,” but argued so was the prospect of cutting more than $1.3 million from the proposal. Due to the cap, the board could cut that amount without having any effect on taxpayers.
“I understand that it’s daunting, but we have to look at what the schools actually need,” she said.
The discussion ended in a 3-3 tie, even as School Director Nancy Leclerc was calling for much deeper cuts and Hennessey was reiterating the importance of the board uniting behind a budget on Wednesday.
david.delcore
@timesargus.com
