The news about the Override Study Committee is that there is little news yet. According to Selectman and OSC Co-Chair Dick Benka, although the Committee has not yet finished its report, it voted to recommend that the Board of Selectmen seek a Community Preservation Act override from town residents.
The OSC’s report was originally scheduled to be finalized on March 1 so that its recommendations would have the potential to be implemented in the Fiscal Year 2015 budget, which begins in July. That schedule would have given the Board of Selectmen the option to put an override on the ballot during the May 6 town elections.
However, Schools Superintendent William Lupini and town administrators have put together bridge budgets-bud gets that cover FY15 but do not resolve any long-term issues–to give the OSC more time to work than the March deadline would have.
A Jan. 15 presentation of the bridge budget concept by Town Administrator Melvin Kleckner to the OSC stated, “My observation is that the necessary analysis and, more importantly, the consensus necessary to present a tax override proposal cannot be achieved by that date.”
Benka said he hopes that the Committee will produce an interim report this June and then a final report in November after taking care of the last odds and ends in the summer.
“The subcommittees who are working on matters now are already starting to put together reports,” he said. “They’re pulling the information together. They’re making a lot of headway, and they want to wrap things up as best we can.”
According to Benka, people are currently working on a feasibility study and schematic designs for a new Devotion School. After that is done, Benka said, there are negotiations with the Massachusetts School Building Authority for state funding to cover part of the building cost.
To determine how big an override would be, the Selectmen will need to know the final cost of the Devotion project.
According to Benka, because negotiations with the state will not be done until February or March of next year, an override could not be on the ballot until May 2015.
Benka said that the schools originally requested an 11 percent property tax increase in addition to the regular 2.5 percent increase. The OSC, appointed by the Board of Selectmen, is tasked with reviewing town finances to try to reduce that number.
The OSC has seven subcommittees, each looking at a different aspect of town spending. The possibility of cuts to the METCO or Materials Fee programs has drawn the most public attention and outcry; at a public hearing on Jan. 22, students, parents and teachers poured into Town Hall to give comments in support of those programs. The issue is being studied by the School Populations Subcommittee.
According to Benka, the subcommittee is still working on their report, which has yet to be presented to the full OSC.
“Just to be clear: Nobody has reached any conclusions on any recommendations at this point,” Benka said. “One exception is the vote that the Override Study Committee took… to transmit to the Board of Selectmen a recommendation to consider a tax override under the Community Preservation Act. That was really the only official action we’ve taken to this point.”
The CPA is a Massachusetts law that provides matching funds to towns if residents vote to raise taxes for community preservation activities, the preservation of green space.
According to School Committee Chairman Alan Morse, if the town is planning to spend money on community preservation anyway, financing it in part with state funds would have the benefit of saving room in the town’s budget for other items that are financed solely with local funds.
Benka said that he guesses if the Board of Selectmen decides to follow the OSC’s recommendation to ask voters for a CPA override, they would put it on the same ballot as the general override.
“I think that it’s likely that if that happens, that would be part of next spring’s vote,” he said. “It could happen earlier than that; it could happen at any time. But that’s ultimately a political judgment as to whether it makes sense to go to the voters twice or it makes sense to package everything together.”
According to Morse, in 2006, Brookline residents voted down a CPA override that was on the ballot a year before a general override.
“We knew the next year we would have an override that was principally for the school system,” he said, “And people were concerned that if the taxpayers were asked for an additional tax increase next year, they might say to themselves, ‘Hey, last year I voted for a tax increase above the 2.5 percent. How come I’m being asked to do that again? I’m going to say no.’”
Aaron Sege can be contacted at [email protected].
