GRANBY — In just over an hour, Granby voters approved all 16 articles presented as part of special and annual Town Meetings Monday night, including approval to pay a $178,113 school lunch deficit.
Eighty-one of the town’s approximately 4,200 registered voters turned out to have their voice heard.
After failing to pass at a special Town Meeting in January, voters almost unanimously approved to pay the school lunch deficit.
The deficit has been building since 2011 but has grown more quickly in the past few years because more students are opting to bring lunch from home. Select Board Chairman Mark Bail told residents that the current school committee and school superintendent are new since the debt occurred.
“Due to administrative problems, they were not prepared to pay the lunch shortage,” Bail said.
Bail also cautioned voters that if they didn’t vote to pay for it now, the state would take it out of the town’s taxes.
Finance Committee Chairman John Libera Jr. countered that it was “a little bit more complicated than the state will take it,” and said that the town could have bigger problem if it was allocated after Town Meeting.
“The end result, this is going to get paid,” he said. “It is much, much better if we vote to pay it now rather than to the state.”
Resident Deborah Matthew argued the deficit represented an accountability issue. Instead, Matthew said if three or four teachers were cut it would be enough to cover the deficit.
“Paying for someone’s accountability through our taxes should not be the way to go,” she said. “We do hope they (the school committee) are working on solving it now but coming back to paying an old bill, somebody has to be accountable. It shouldn’t be the taxpayers.”
School Committee Chairman Emre Evren told Matthew he appreciated her suggestion but that cutting teachers would only lead to more students leaving the district thus increasing the problem.
“Right now, the school lunch deficit is below the contingency in our budget,” Evren said. “Therefore there is nothing that will be coming to the town for this year. In a very short period of time, this school committee was able to take control of it.”
After a failed motion of postponing the remaining three articles on the special Town Meeting warrant until June Town Meeting, all remaining articles passed on both warrants.
Evren presented a motion to postpone three articles moving a total of $685,245 from free cash into stabilization funds. He argued that it would be better to discuss the articles along with all the other financial articles to come before voters at Town Meeting on June 12.
“We are depriving our Town Meeting of having a full picture of our financials,” he said.
The annual town election takes place Monday.
Emily Cutts can be reached at ecutts@gazettenet.com.