The town of Great Barrington, Massachusetts has released its budget proposal for fiscal year 2025. The $46 million plan includes an almost 13% increase in the town’s operating budget to a total of $16.5 million, and a tax hike of just under 6%. While final approval is in the hands of voters at town meeting on May 6th, the proposal now moves to the selectboard and finance committee for review, debate, and discussion. The budget’s release comes as the community grapples with a shortage of affordable and workforce housing and tainted water in the village of Housatonic. Selectboard chair Steve Bannon tells WAMC that Great Barrington’s elected officials will have to walk a fine line between controlling cost of living while ensuring high-quality services.
BANNON: The increases are fueled by debt service- So, borrowing that was authorized by town meeting in previous years, mostly last year, are coming due. We have to start paying installments. That $2 million and the 13% is the recommendation or the proposal by the town manager, but it's really up to the finance committee and selectboard to make the final decision. He's done his best job at it, he’s cut many things out that he would like out of it, and his staff. They've cut things out of it, but now it's up to the finance committee and selectboard to either say yes, or to make some recommendations.
WAMC: Speaking as the chair of the selectboard, what are your thoughts? And what recommendations are you forecasting?
Well, we've only had one meeting so far. We have four meetings to go through the entire budget. Clearly, it is not ideal to have that large of an increase. So, I would love to see us to be able to reduce the budget in some manner. I also know that it's- There have been months they've been looking at it and trying to do that. So, we'll have to see if we can come up with some way to reduce the bottom number.
Now, looking at those past decisions that have fueled this debt, what kinds of things are we talking about here? What decisions that the town has made in the past are impacting this FY25 budget?
So, what's really impacting the FY25 is a lot of infrastructure projects- Roads, bridges, sidewalks, building improvements, things that need to be done, and if we put them off, they're just going to be more expensive, and maybe not even able to be done. Building, if you don't do building improvements for year after year, you may really have some problems. So, it's mostly infrastructure, but we have an aging town with a lot of needs that and we put some of those off in the past. So, I don't regret that we did those, we just have to figure out a way to pay for him.
Now, as the document, the budget proposal document outlines, the HR budget is going up sharply at 86%. Can you break down that? I'm sure that's a line item that’ll catch some eyes as people start to review this.
Yeah, and that's a little misleading. So, last year, we had an intermunicipal agreement with other towns to hire an HR director. We have a fairly large staff, and to have the town manager spend his time working on HR is not the best use of his time. So, we did decide that we would split an HR director with- I think it was three other towns. But as the year went on, it was clear that we needed our own HR director. So instead of us paying 50%, the proposal next year is to pay 100%, and that actually started in November. The finance committee approved that to go on. So, we actually have- That's the only new position right now that's in the budget, but it's really an old new position. It started six months ago.
The proposal as submitted by Mark Pruhenski, the town manager, also calls for an almost 6% increase on the tax rate. We hear so much about cost-of-living issues in Great Barrington- What are your thoughts on the implications of raising taxes by 6%, possibly, for FY25?
Yeah, I'm not real enthused about it- And I don't blame Mark at all. He brought to us a budget that was really a level service budget for the most part. It's not like there's a lot of new positions or a lot of bells and whistles, and I think it's our responsibility as elected officials to say yes or no. And I’m going to look at it real closely. I've always been one who would like to see a 3%, 4%, or 5% increase at most, whether it's school or whether it's town, and this increase is large. So, I'm definitely going to want to take a look at it.
Does anything in the budget proposal address the ongoing situation with contaminated water in Housatonic?
That is not in the budget at all, because the study that was funded for last year through the finance committee is just being done now. So no, that is not in the budget.
Great Barrington has made millions from cannabis tax revenues. What is the current status of that supply of money and how is it being used?
So that money was used last year. Not all of it, but a large chunk of it was used last year to reduce the debt that we're seeing this year. If it wasn't for that money, the debt service that we see this year, $2 million, would be much higher. And we knew what would happen with the cannabis money- It would start to go down as the years went on, as New York state and other states and other towns in Massachusetts would open up other retail stores, we would see less money. So instead of spending it on ongoing projects that then would have to be funded by the taxpayer, we've been using it mostly on infrastructure, which are usually one-time payments.
Great Barrington is over $10 million in its free cash rainy day fund. Could any of those funds be used to offset the tax increases that the current proposal would lay out for the next fiscal year?
Yeah, the town manager is using some free cash to offset the increases, and it's going to be really up to the finance committee and the selectboard to decide if we need to use more of it.
What do you foresee right now as the big conversations in this budget? I mean, Great Barrington, it's an outspoken community, people certainly make themselves well heard in local governance- Where do you see debate leading looking at this document?
So, I think it's clear that people think that our taxes are too high in Great Barrington and a large raise increase in taxes is not going to please people- So that's why we really have to take a look at it and try to figure out where we can lower the tax rate. The problem is, as we lower the tax rate, there may be some decrease in services also. I'm not guaranteeing that, but that that's one way to lower it- If you close a department, you have less hours for a department, or do something that reduces the amount of spending you have. And people are used to us being fully funded for positions and for services. So, if we don't pick up garbage on Main Street on weekends to reduce overtime, people aren't going to be happy about that. We have to find something that lowers the presentation by Mr. Pruhenski but still keeps services at least to a level that's acceptable.
