GOSHEN — School funding dominated the conversation at annual Town Meeting Monday, and though voters were willing to approve a budget that calls for more money for schools in the upcoming fiscal year, some are worried about the schools’ future budgets.
The $2,634,759 budget approved for fiscal year 2017 by 52 of the town’s 714 registered voters is a nearly 3 percent increase over the current year. The fiscal year begins July 1.
School funding represents 54 percent of the budget at a total of $1,390,314. This includes $717,317 for the Goshen Chesterfield School, $482,198 for the Hampshire Regional School District, $153,018 for vocational school and $37,781 for vocational transportation.
According to Select Board and Finance Committee member Angela Otis, funding for the schools has gone up 5.45 percent over last year.
Finance Committee member Dawn Scaparotti said that the school budget increase for next fiscal year is expected to be offset by a decrease in the town’s debt service to the schools. But it won’t be like that forever, she said.
“We are aware that there are issues coming up for our town and we are trying to figure how to accommodate them out long term,” Scaparotti said.
“How can we work together to try to keep the increases under the Proposition 2½ requirement?” she asked Hampshire Regional School Superintendant Craig Jurgensen.
“The question you ask is a tough one,” Jurgensen said, noting that this year the district was able to keep the budget increase at 2.4 percent overall.
Jurgensen said the district struggles with increasing unfunded mandates from the state. Additionally, a disproportionate number of charter schools in the area take a bite out of the public school budget, he said.
“Just one student going to a charter school takes about $7,000 out of the district, while one school choice student only brings in $5,000,” Jurgensen said.
Some noted that it was hard to see town employees go without raises and residents on fixed incomes struggle to make ends meet while the school budget continues to rise.
Others, like Alan Kirouac of Hammond Circle, said that he believed many of the school budget issues were not in the hands of the school district but lay with the state.
“The big problem is the unfunded state mandates,” Kirouac said. “If we as a community want to do something to help this cause, we need to focus on the people we voted into office in Boston to fix that problem. It isn’t the school that can change it, it’s the state.”
There are no across the board raises for town employees in next year’s budget. However, the town clerk salary increased from $6,890 to $11,000 and the treasurer salary increased from $9,539 to $15,140.
Scaparotti said that the town had conducted a recent study of pay scales in the surrounding towns and discovered the salaries of these two positions were significantly under par.
“We found that they were out of whack, and we have been paying only a fraction of what other towns pay for these functions,” Scaparotti said. “This proposed salary is more in line what other towns in are region of our size are doing.”
Voters also approved spending $39,681 of free cash for payment on the principle and interest for a 2014 Mack dump truck and $8,570 of free cash for payment on the principle of a 2013 police cruiser.