MARSHFIELD — Twinfield Union School officials say the common level of appraisal is completely to blame for tax increases that would be seen if the school budget is approved at town meeting in March.
The school board that oversees the school that serves Plainfield and Marshfield held its regular meeting Tuesday night via Zoom in anticipation of a storm that ended up knocking out power for thousands of residents across the state. Part of the meeting’s agenda included a budget discussion, with the board close to wrapping up its budget season.
Michael Concessi, the Caledonia Central Supervisory Union’s finance and operations director, reported the proposed budget is increasing from $7,470,638 to $8,049,084, an increase of $578,446. Concessi said 98% of the budget increase is due to five categories: He said collectively-bargained compensation is up $189,106, health insurance increased $116,710, and benefits for school faculty and staff increased $34,000. He said assessments from the supervisory union — which include funding for expenses like food service, special education and transportation — are up $151,526 with this proposed budget. And the budget includes an additional $75,000 to pay for an after-school program that had been grant funded and is now being funded through the budget.
“You could argue, outside of the after-school program, it’s all inflation driven,” he said.
Even though the proposed budget is going up by nearly $600,000, Concessi said the budget actually would have reduced the tax rate by 4 cents. He said that’s because the state changed how it calculates how many pupils attend public school. He said the state moved from equalized pupils to a long-term weighted average of daily membership. Concessi said this new calculation worked out Twinfield’s favor, the only school in the district to see a tax rate decrease using the calculation.
But because the common level of appraisal (CLA) is out of whack in Marshfield and Plainfield, both of those towns would be looking at tax rate increases, if the school budget is approved in March. The CLA is a figure the state uses to adjust local education tax rates based on how accurate it believes local property assessments are.
Marshfield recently completed a reappraisal. Concessi said the CLA in that town fell from 100.71% last year to 87.02% this year. He said this resulted in a tax rate increase of 22 cents, for an overall increase of 18 cents when the 4-cent reduction from the school budget is factored in.
In Plainfield, the CLA there fell from 76.19% to 69.86%. The town would see an overall tax rate increase of 11 cents, if the school budget is approved. The town has hired a contractor to conduct a reappraisal in 2025.
The proposed budget would increase taxes by $176.95 in Marshfield for every $100,000 of assessed property value. Taxes would go up by $110.18 in Plainfield for every $100,000 of assessed property value.
But school officials were quick to point out residents who receive the income sensitive rate would only see their taxes go up by $15.17 in both towns, if the budget is approved.
The board then voted unanimously to approve the proposed budget to put it before the voters. The board is expected to meet during a special meeting next week to approve the warning for the school budget vote.
Board Chair Patrick Healy asked his fellow board members to start thinking about how the board can work on planning for the school’s financial future. Healy said the student count continues to decrease. When presenting the school budget to the select board in Plainfield last year, Healy reported Twinfield’s student population has decreased by 100 over the past 12 years.
At Tuesday’s meeting, he said, “One of these days, we’re going to end up saying, ‘OK, what do we do?’ Do we start to look at other schools, merging with other schools? Are we starting to look at tuitioning out? We have to look at it. Period. It may not be tomorrow, it may not be next year. But we have to start looking down the road. Because if we look behind us, we’ve lost a lot of students.”
Board member Sara Cain said she’s heard “rumblings” about Cabot possibly looking into a merger. Superintendent Mark Tucker said what Cain may have heard is there’s again a petition circulating in Cabot seeking to close the high school there and offer school choice. He said there’s been some discussion in Cabot of only offering pre-K through sixth grade and then trying to find another district to accept Cabot’s students.
Board member Mark Kaufman asked if a fiscal analysis has been done on a possible regional high school for the area.
Tucker said that question has been raised by other boards in the district. The superintendent said the amount of work it would take to do that analysis is complicated by the fact that the district doesn’t know if there are any possible partners interested in joining a regional high school.
Tucker said the first step in looking into a regional high school would be to form a merger study committee.
The superintendent said the situation was ironic because in 2017, Plainfield and Marshfield voted in favor of merging Twinfield’s high school with those in Cabot and Danville, but residents in Cabot and Danville voted against the merger. Tucker said now Cabot and Danville are looking for possible partners to merge with.
Cabot and Twinfield were part of their own supervisory union together at the time of the 2017 vote. After the failed merger vote, the state forced the schools to dissolve the supervisory union through Act 46 and added them to Caledonia Central in 2019.
eric.blaisdell
@timesargus.com
