We're waiting for the Superintendent & Town Manager, and 12/16
Where do things stand?
- The Amherst Finance Committee is still working on finalizing the FY26 Financial Guidelines, and will discuss again Tuesday 12/10 3-5PM. As of right now, the Financial Guidelines do not include the $355,400 that the Regional Schools received last year in their base for calculating this year’s 3% increase. Instead, the guidelines instruct the Town Manager to prioritize inclusion of this increase if there is adequate money once revenue and expense projections are better known in January and into the spring. So, this is progress but the money is not yet a given. The guidelines currently give each of Amherst’s functional areas (Municipal, Elementary Schools, Regional Schools, Library) a 3% increase over last year. Unfortunately, this amount will still result in significant budget deficits at the schools. In Finance Committee, some Town Councilors have been asking some really good questions about school funding, especially Ellisha Walker (at large) and Mandi Jo Hanneke (at large). It show progress that these conversatiowns are even happening!
- Allocation of the FY24 surplus: At the 11/18 Town Council meeting, Councilors held off voting to approve $1M to roads and sidewalks until the schools could make a proposal for using some of this money for capital costs. We do not know where this stands currently and we hope that a request from the Superintendent and School Committees is forthcoming. The process would be that the Superintendent/School Committees would have to be in communication with the Town Manager, and only the Town Manager can put forth the actual request to the Town Council. If there are conversations happening about this, they are not public so there are a lot of unknowns right now. See this post for a recap of which Town Councilors voted to hold off sending all of this money directly to schools. In Finance Committee, Counclior Mandi Jo Hanneke (at large) has had some great questions about how the surplus has been distributed in the past as well as the process by which the municipality seems to get off-cycle capital funds whereas the schools do not. Again, it’s great that these conversations are happening as they challenge a status quo that has not prioritized the schools, or even put them on equal footing.
- The Town Council and Finance Committee have been discussing the funding model for the four capital projects (Jones Library project, new elementary school, new fire station, new DPW). These models take four different approaches to the timeline of the buildings as well as how much money is borrowed versus funded from town reserves. This is something to pay attention to because no matter which of the four models the Town Council chooses, the result will be constrained available funding for all other functions in town for decades to come. As it stands right now, the Finance Committee has asked the Town Manager and Town Finance Director for additional information and they will continue discussing this on 12/10. It is possible that the Town Council will take this up for a vote at their 12/16 meeting, and if so, we may need to mobilize to ask them to slow down this process until the consequences for our schools can be better understood. We don’t want to be locked into a situation in which school funding is even more limited in future years.
Possible upcoming actions – Save the date 12/16 6:30 PM for the next Amherst Town Council Meeting. We hope to let everyone know shortly whether advocacy will be needed at this meeitng in terms of the FY26 Financial Guidelines and the Funding Models for the capital projects. Of course, it never hurts to show up or write to your councilors to tell them that our schools are important to you.