SOUTH HADLEY — Facing a $3.5 million fiscal cliff that threatens to shutter libraries and gut school athletics, South Hadley Town Meeting members signaled their preference for a $11 million override this week. Yet, despite the overwhelming support in the hall, the debate revealed a deep-seated anxiety over a recent community survey showing nearly half of residents remain opposed to any override at all.
“The question we need to consider is not so much which option we personally think is the right choice,” Town Meeting member Mark Adams said. “The real question to address is, which one can get across the finish line on election day?”
For the foreseeable future, South Hadley’s $3.5 million fiscal cliff is projected to grow between $2 million to $3 million per year. The Budget Task Force, a committee created to study the town’s financial challenges, suggested a Proposition 2 1/2 override as the most effective short-term solution. The group backed an $11 million override raised over five years, but also put forth three potential overrides for $3 million, $6 million and $9 million.
“If I were to say that we were able to implement 100% of the recommendations in the task force report to a really high degree of effectiveness, it would probably be a net result of about a million a year,” Wong said. “The problem is that there’s very few things that we can do, and they’re all hard work.”
The special Town Meeting did not allocate any funds, but rather acted as a straw poll to survey the opinions of 88 Town Meeting members in attendance. The vote will inform the Select Board’s decision on whether or not the override question appears on the ballot in April’s election.
The legislative body overwhelmingly voted down a deficit budget and showed a preference for the $11 million override. Of the four options, the $11 million is the only one that provides level-services to the schools.
“Our kids tonight are at home gaming out whether they’re going to be able to graduate from this school,” resident Brian Willette said. “They deserve better. They deserve stability.”
However, the expense of such an override on residents’ tax bills weighed heavily on the conversation. Select Board member Carol Constant said 2,635 people in South Hadley, roughly 37% of the population, qualify for affordable housing. Many people asked the Select Board to mitigate the impacts on low-income and senior residents, but Constant questioned whether the town could implement such sweeping programs.
“That’s a lot of people,” she said. “We’re fooling ourselves if we don’t think about that and take it into consideration.”
Services at stake
With no override, the school budget will be more than $1 million below level service and require severe cuts to balance finances. According to Superintendent Jennifer Voyik, this includes eliminating a teacher in each grade at the elementary level, the district’s middle and high school music teacher as well as one high school teacher in each of the core subjects. At the administration level, the district would be cutting five positions — the athletic director, an assistant principal, the assistant director of student services, an assistant superintendent and the mental health coordinator. All funding for sports, extracurricular activities and after school programs would be eliminated.
“I fear that we will lose students and we will lose staff members and it will continue to snowball year after year,” Voyik said.
On the town side, a budget without an override would equate to around $1 million in cuts. This proposal includes a reduction of hours to 10 library employees and loss of two staff each at the police department, Town Hall, the Senior Center and Department of Public Works. Management staff would be reorganized to compensate for the loss of personnel. Additionally, the Gaylord Memorial Library would have to close, the South Hadley Public Library would lose accreditation, and the spray parks no longer run.
“Desertification also means that the library loses access to state aid, which is a considerable portion of the library’s budget,” resident Gillian Woldorf said. “Our school libraries rely a lot on the public libraries, and it would also mean significant reductions in all of the activities that are offered to the community free of charge through the library.”
While higher override amounts would make service cuts less severe, even the $11 million option would leave the town budget $300,000 short of maintaining level services.
Residents can compute the impact of override option with the Department of Local Services tax calculator. For the average single family home of $417,106, an $11 million override raised over five years would increase property taxes by an additional $1,764. Wong also created a chart of the estimated increases in property taxes on the Proposition 2 1/2 override page of the town website.
An effective strategy or a steep ask?
Speakers at Town Meeting warned that the proposed service cuts would undermine the town’s vitality and sense of community. Town Meeting member Nick Cream argued that even the most seasoned educators cannot prevent students from falling behind if class sizes swell to unmanageable levels. Charles Miles, also a Town Meeting member, added that town services like the library and spray parks enrich the lives of families. Resident Aisha McClure said the community around youth sports is valuable to her as a sports mom.
“I know people, and am friends with people who only show up to school and get good grades because of sports,” said Lucy Camp, an eighth-grade student at Michael E Smith Middle School. “If the program is cut, students will lose motivation to show up and work hard in school.”
Other speakers saw the $6 million option as the town’s best chance of passing any sort of override. Ira Brezinsky noted that the $3 million negative school choice budget needed to be redirected as soon as possible, and front-loading a $6 million override gives the town “liquidity” to address it. Lily Newman requested the Select Board aggregate each override so the town could better decide what to prioritize. Citing the Budget Task Force survey, Emily Young noted that with 46% of respondents already against an override, convincing the public to approve the maximum $11 million request will be an uphill battle.
“I am the last person on this planet that wants to destroy our schools and destroy this community, but we’ve got to find something that will pass, because I don’t want to see that deficit budget,” she said.
The Select Board will hold a budget public hearing on March 3 before their vote on March 17. South Hadley will hold a Community Meeting on March 28 to hear more from residents before the election on April 14.