SHUTESBURY — At a special Town Meeting Saturday, residents will act on potential new revenue sources for Shutesbury from the sale of a home that is being donated to the town and the assessment of community impact fees on short-term rental properties.
The session, which starts at 9 a.m. at the Shutesbury Elementary School, will be the first opportunity for residents to use clickers for vote tallies.
At a recent Select Board meeting, Moderator Nettie Harrington Pangallo said the 250 Option Technologies Inc. clickers, which were given to Shutesbury by Amherst, offer an instantaneous count of all votes. Residents approved the funds needed to operate the clicker system at annual Town Meeting last spring.
Residents will get to use the clickers to vote on whether to finalize the bequest of a home at 41 Cooleyville Road formerly occupied by the late David Rogers Ulen. The Select Board agreed to accept the property in September.
If the town sells the property as is, proceeds would eventually end up in its general fund. Estimates say the home could net the town between $100,000 and $150,000.
In other business, voters will decide whether to adopt two community impact fees allowed by state law.
The first is 3% for short-term rental units in “professionally managed” one-, two- and three-family homes. Town Administrator Hayley Bolton said the town could collect around $5,000 a year from these commercially managed properties. “It’s a good option for the town where we’re allowed to do it by the state,” Bolton said.
Another article seeks a similar community impact fee for short-term rental units located in owner-occupied two- or three-family dwellings.
In other votes, residents will be asked to set up two funds, one a voluntary municipal scholarship or educational fund and the other a voluntary aid to the elderly and disabled, each created through donations made on municipal tax bills or motor vehicle excise tax bills.
Bolton said both would provide avenues for taxpayers to help neighbors by voluntarily paying extra.
Voters will also be asked to establish a special education reserve fund, under state law, that provides a means of covering unanticipated or unbudgeted costs of special education,
out-of-district tuition or transportation.
Money in this fund, which can’t exceed 2% of the annual net school spending established by the School Committee, would be distributed by a majority vote of the School Committee and a majority vote of the Select Board.
“This would help the school stabilize, set money aside, so when they get those bigger increases, it can mitigate that impact,” Bolton said.
Other warrant articles ask voters to close Community Preservation Act grant funding for the West Quabbin Woodlands Conservation Area, which would return $10,000 to the CPA account; to amend a section of the personnel bylaw so that holidays provided to employees are referenced in the town’s personnel handbook, rather than the bylaw; and to pay two bills from previous years, one for $5,000 to the Pioneer Valley Mosquito Control District and the other a $238.40 debt collection bill from McCarthy, Burgess & Wolff.
A potential $3,000 appropriation for septic and water consulting services, to help the town determine the future of the former M.N. Spear Library building, was removed from the warrant. That expenditure may be brought to annual Town Meeting next spring, when free cash is certified, or be appropriated in some other form.
