MEMBER SIGN IN
Not a member? Become one today!
         iBerkshires     Williamstown Chamber     Williams College     Your Government     Land & Housing Debate
Search
Lanesborough Town Meeting Approves Budgets, Rejects Pipeline, Docks Bylaws
By Andy McKeever, iBerkshires Staff
09:19AM / Wednesday, June 10, 2015
Print | Email  

Town Administrator Paul Sieloff and the Board of the Selectmen.

The crowd was standing room only but thinned out after a few topics.


A total of 277 residents attended town meeting this year.

LANESBOROUGH, Mass. — Town meeting on Tuesday adopted the town's $10.4 million budget nearly as proposed, including the Mount Greylock Regional School assessment.

Voters also adopted a resolution to oppose the proposed natural gas pipeline and rejected new docks bylaws.

The first hour and a half of Tuesday's meeting centered on the town budget. Ultimately, the proposed $10.4 million spending plan's bottom line stayed the same but the 277 attendees opted to move $25,000 from the town's reserves to the elementary school. 
 
The reserve debate centered around a public hearing earlier in the year. The School Committee opted to empty its reserve fund and use the anticipated school choice revenue as their backup.
 
Headed by then-School Committee member Robert Barton, a back-and-forth around that issue with the town administrator led to the town agreeing to put a $25,000 in reserve on the town's side. That $25,000 was added to the town's $40,000 to create a $65,000 reserve.
 
"The decisions about school funds should not lie with the Finance Committee," resident Michelle Johnson said.
 
The Finance Committee said they were not going to reserve that money just for the school, despite the discussions that had taken place at the public hearing between Town Administrator Paul Sieloff and Barton. Finance Committee members justified the entire $65,000 as being "proactive" in having reserve for all town departments. Last year, the town spent less than $40,000 of its reserve fund.
 
"We have $60,000 in reserve fund. We are doing it to be proactive so we don't run out of money," Finance Committee Chairman Al Terranova said. "We haven't set aside specific money for specific things."
 
Mount Greylock School Committee member Richard Cohen has filed an array complaints with the secretary of state and attorney general's office over the way the town has handled numerous issues relating to the elementary school. One of those complaints argued that the town can't earmark funds in the reserve for specific departments. 
 
"There is no formal relationship to how this is dedicated to," Sieloff said. "It is an account the Finance Committee can use as it pleases." 
 
Cutting through the minutiae, resident Don Dermyer simply said, "if we think the school deserves the money, put it in the school budget." And that's what town meeting eventually did.
 
With that $25,000 to the school budget, Barton then attempted to reduce it by $40,000, which would have been an additional $15,000 lower than proposed. The school budget was already slashed by $182,000 before town meeting. 
 
Again, Barton focused on reserves, saying, "It is a number that is larger than it needs to be. I believe we can reduce this budget by $40,000."
 
Barton said the school has $30,000 in reserves: $25,000 from the transfer and then $60,000 or so coming in from school choice. However, it was Barton's recommendation during the public hearing to deplete all of the reserves and the School Committee used the anticipated school choice revenue to backfill. The school received half of the amount of students then budgeted, which left a $30,000 shortfall. That $30,000 is put into reserves, which was firstly eyed to be at $60,000. With the school choice revenue spent, the school's budget has $55,000 in reserves after voters moved the $25,000.
 
Barton's attempt to cut the budget more failed. The school budget passed at $2,424,709, which is still $157,000 less than last year. 
 
"You can't cut any more money out of the school budget. They've cut enough," said resident Jennifer DeChaine. "They cut a lot of important people out of the school. I don't know how it is going to look next year, but they need every bit of that budget."
 
The Mount Greylock Regional High School assessment passed with little controversy. The assessment rose $102,870 to $2.7 million, which is close to a 4 percent change. However, the overall school budget increased by 1.25 percent. 
 
"A 1.25 is not a great big pie-in-the-sky increase to the budget. ... We cut all kinds of things out of our budget," Superintendent Gordon Noseworthy said. "It is not by any means extravagant and all is not well. We are running on a shoestring. ... We have to cut a whole lot of stuff out to maintain the obligations we have to pay."
 
Finance Committee member Ronald Tinkham, who stepped aside from his post to speak from the public microphone to differentiate himself as a resident and not an elected official, called for the budget to be slashed more. He said the budget is constantly rising and major changes to school operations need to be made.
 

Superintendent Gordon Noseworthy said the schools could benefit from more investment but the budgets were crafted with the town's finances in mind.

"By voting this budget you provide a message that everything is OK and no changes are required," Tinkham said. 
 
Noseworthy responded, saying, "Everything is not OK. If everything were OK, we would be moving forward, growing."
 
As an educator, he said the school could easily have used a 10 percent increase to help bolster the educational programming. But, administrators were sensitive to the town's financial situation and pared it back. 
 
Voters approved the budget.
 
A resident resolution calling on the town to send letters and take an opposition stance to the proposed Kinder Morgan Northeast Energy Direct Project also passed overwhelmingly. Resident Russell Freedman headed the effort and petition. At the start of town meeting, he successfully motioned to move the pipeline to be the second item. Once that was approved, about half of the crowd left the meeting.
 
"This is a bad, unnecessary project proposed by an untrustworthy company," Freedman said, citing health and safety concerns. The proposed pipeline is eyed to cut across town in the right of ways for the utilities - i.e., the power lines on the north end of the town cut from Hancock to Cheshire.
 
Board of Health member Larry Spatz added that his board agreed to adopt a finding that the company "Kinder Morgan (is) banned from conducting any activities in the town of Lanesborough."
 
Nobody spoke in opposition to the resolution fighting the pipeline and it overwhelmingly passed.
 
Voters also rejected the latest attempt to create dock bylaws for users around the lake. One version of dock bylaws was rejected last year as an attempt to ease conflicts among neighbors. After last year's rejection, a larger group attempted to craft laws that would pass. But, the laws for docks, floats, rafts and buoys failed.
 
"I think we need to well enough alone. And I am talking about only the docks," Tinkham said. 
 
The two petitions regard the docks were also moved up in the 27 article warrant. After nearly three hours, town meeting had handled the three largest issues and the school's gymnasium emptied down to some 50 or so residents. Those residents hammered out the remaining 23 articles in 45 minutes - most with no discussion.
 
Most discussion on those remaining articles were two regarding snow and ice removal from sidewalks. The town proposed a bylaw that required residents to clear their sidewalks in 24 hours after a storm. Or, town officials asked for the approval to buy a skid-steer for the highway department to choose. Residents chose the skid-steer instead of the law.
 
"You can't possibly keep up with cleaning the sidewalks," said Tammy Garrity, who lives on Route 7 where state plows constantly pile the snow onto the sidewalk. 
 
Her concerned was echoed by a half-dozen residents.
Comments
More Featured Stories
Williamstown.com is owned and operated by: Boxcar Media 102 Main Sreet, North Adams, MA 01247 -- T. 413-663-3384
© 2011 Boxcar Media LLC - All rights reserved