GRANBY — In under an hour, voters at the Granby Town Meeting unanimously approved five out of six articles Monday night but shot down a request to close a school budget gap related to school lunch funding.
That school funding article, which addressed a $178,113.50 deficit, failed to pass with 30 people voting in favor and 37 voting against. If approved, the money would have come from the town’s free cash.
More than 70 people turned out for the meeting held in the Granby Junior Senior High School gym.
In a matter of minutes the first two articles dealing with a recent change in law that required the town to vote on how premium money gained from selling a bond will be used and the form of payments from a solar developer would take passed with virtually no discussion.
In introducing Article 3, the school lunch deficit, Select Board Chairman Mark Bail told voters it was no surprise the town has been having problems with budgets at the schools.
“The school has been losing money on the lunch side every year,” Bail said. “We were allowed to run a deficit for a little while … the state said that was enough. That is why we are here tonight.”
The deficit, Bail explained, was not due to malfeasance nor incompetence. Instead, the district doesn’t charge enough to cover the full cost of lunch, he said.
“This $178,000, our kids ate it. It paid for school lunch,” Bail said. “It’s been used. It was eaten.”
Finance Committee Chairman John Libera Jr. told residents his committee had hoped the article would not be read but rather tabled to a later meeting.
“We don’t think it is the appropriate time,” Libera said. “The finance committee recommends you vote it down.”
Libera and the committee’s reasoning was that the deficit, which unlike the other two school deficits addressed at the special Town Meeting, involved real money and should be discussed at the time the overall school budget is discussed.
“We believe that is the appropriate time to discuss this when we see it in the whole context,” he said. Resident George Randall said during the meeting he found the $178,000 deficit unsettling.
“I think that is unconscionable that that amount of money has come forward at this time,” he said.
School Committee Chairman Emre Evren spoke to voters about how the deficit occurred and what the committee was doing to prevent it from happening again. The deficit was the result of a combination of costs not matching revenue as well as miscommunication or a lack of communication between town entities, according Evren.
“Until May last year, we didn’t hear about this problem,” Evren said of the deficit. “Since then, this is a constant topic we’ve [the school committee] been discussing.”
Evren said the committee is working to put together a documented process with the target to eliminate the deficit problem moving forward.
Evren also encouraged residents to hold the committee accountable. With that urging, one resident suggested the best way to do that was to take the money out of the current school budget.
Evren objected saying it went beyond holding them accountable and would hurt the students.
Article 4 and 5 passed with little discussion. The two addressed $220,541.08 in deficits in two areas of the school budget caused by a clerical error.
Town voters also approved an $8,000 expense to purchase chairs.
Emily Cutts can be reached at ecutts@gazettenet.com.