Finds Giving Taxpayers A Vote On Big-Ticket Items Would Hamper Their Efforts To Improve Schools
BRISTOL — With one voice, members of the Newfound Area School Board dismissed the voters’ directive to put large capital improvement items into separate warrant articles, arguing that doing so would complicate their efforts to improve the district’s schools.
Vice-Chair Jason Robert of Hebron, a former school administrator, said allowing taxpayers to vote separately on capital improvement items would be “giant hindrance” — a term Heidi Milbrand of Bristol echoed in arguing against placing expenditures greater than $24,999 into separate warrant articles for the annual school district meeting.
The directive came in a non-binding petitioned article that passed, 921-625, during the March School District Meeting. It was part of a backlash against the school board’s two-year campaign to diminish the role of taxpayers in making spending decisions and followed an especially tumultuous year in which board members said they wanted to give special consideration to residents who supported more spending but did not cast ballots.
Administrators looking for a way to catch up on long-neglected repairs and maintenance that could not be funded under the school district’s tax cap had exploited a provision of the Official Ballot Act, RSA 40:13, that stipulated that the school board could determine what constitutes a one-time expenditure. The school board endorsed the approach, determining that a roof repair at the high school was part of ongoing maintenance, rather than a one-time expenditure, and therefore the nearly $1 million expenditure would be guaranteed through the default budget if voters rejected it in the proposed budget.
Bristol resident and former school administrator Archie Auger challenged that approach, and angry residents showed up at several school board meetings to protest the maneuver.
Vincent Paul Migliore, then a school board member from Bridgewater, attempted to strike a middle ground by seeking a policy that would allow residents to vote separately on capital improvement items, but Chair Jeff Levesque of Groton termed the effort a “temper tantrum” and the school board ultimately determined that there was “no value” in allowing residents to vote on such items.
The school district budget committee, which provides a separate set of eyes to determine whether the spending is justified, agreed that capital improvement items should remain within the operating budget, rather than being presented separately, with Hebron member Don Franklin arguing that voters might be more likely to reject the spending if they saw it in a separate warrant article.
That led to two petitioned warrant articles for March: one to ask the board to put those items in separate articles, and another — which was binding — that took the power to determine the default budget from the school board and vested it instead with the budget committee.
Discussion
During the public comment period on Sept. 3, prior to the discussion on the article, Budget Committee Chair Ruby Hill of Danbury expressed her concerns about the call for a new policy on large expenditures, saying she felt the $25,000 threshold was too low.
“I fear we’ll have five to 20 articles, and pit one town against another,” she said. “Voters can be given a choice without the low value this article would require.”
The petitioned article, while aiming to address only large capital expenditures, had broad language to give the school board great latitude in establishing a policy. In arguing against it, board members used that broad language to argue that it would require all budget items exceeding $25,000 to be placed into separate articles. Examples ranged from electricity and fuel usage to special education.
Business Administrator Michael Limanni reminded the board that one of the reasons the petitioned article is deemed advisory only is that the school district still would have to obey the law on such things as special education requirements. He also pointed out that, even without the policy, the board has the option of placing controversial expenditures on the warrant as separate articles.
Michael O’Malley, a former high school principal who was elected by write-in to succeed Migliore as Bridgewater’s representative on the school board, said a new policy is “unnecessary and redundant” and that it would create inefficiencies.
Levesque, who has served as the board’s representative to the budget committee for the past two years, commented, “If you brought in 100 people and asked them to sit down and look at the budget, you’d get 100 different ideas where that money should be spent. It’s not an easy process, and to further complicate it by making the decisions already made go to the voters for final approval makes a difficult process impossible.”
Melissa Suckling of Danbury said, “We’re trying to be proactive rather than reactive, and maintain these buildings. We’ve come a long way in trying to change that mindset [of deferring maintenance] and this would put us backwards. We need to keep the kids in mind.”
Christine Davol of New Hampton said her concern is that the change would return to the days of pitting one town against another. In the past, projects at the New Hampton Community School or Danbury Elementary School failed to gain support from the other towns, prompting the school board to make sure each budget included something for each of the schools.
Since adopting a capital improvement plan, the district has the ability to plan expenditures over a period of years, showing that improvements at one school will be following in a future year by improvements at another school. That has the potential of evening out expenditures over the years.
Some board members worried that, by allowing residents to vote directly on those capital expenditures, the smaller schools might suffer.
“We as a policy committee went over this very deeply, and didn’t agree with it,” Davol said.
Board members said voters still have the opportunity to attend school board and budget committee meetings to express their opinions, and that they have the ability to amend the bottom line of the budget during the deliberative session.
Set-asides
The school board voted to place $200,000 into the retained fund balance and to return $177,871 to the towns to reduce taxation. It also placed $350,000 of the year-end fund balance into the expendable trust fund for building maintenance, replenishing the account for money used in paving Newfound Road and the high school parking lot this summer.
Limanni explained that state law allows a school district to retain as much a 2.5 percent of its net assessment — money collected through state and local education taxation — as a buffer against unanticipated expenses. Newfound’s net assessment was $16,297,000, making $377,871 available. There are strict guidelines for using that money, including obtaining approval from the budget committee and the New Hampshire Department of Education.
“My goal is to use your trusts so, when we have capital projects, we can budget for so much and use ‘x’ amount from reserves,” Limanni said. “We’ve just been doing repairs, not spending money for new things, and we can get there without killing the taxpayers at the same time.”
The school board authorized Limanni to enter into a multi-year agreement for the purchase of electricity. Limanni said the district’s broker has recommended a contract that would fall under 7 cents per KwH, which he said is one of the best prices he has seen in eight years.
