On Saturday, Monterey, Massachusetts held its annual town meeting at the firehouse. The Southern Berkshire community of around 1,000 sits in the wooded hills east of Great Barrington. The 22-article warrant put before voters included a roughly $5.5 million operating budget for fiscal year 2025, just under a 7% increase over the prior year. It was the first town meeting for Monterey administrator Roger MacDonald, who began in March. He spoke with WAMC.
MACDONALD: Everything went really well. There was a pretty good turnout, upwards of over 80 people. We had a couple big items that we did talk about. One was a lake tax district, that one didn't pass, we had about a 45-minute, 50-minute conversation about that. We also had some conversation about fire department compensation, which is a big topic around most of Southern Berkshire County when it comes to EMS and fire support. So, there was a bit of a conversation about that. Other than that, we did have a recall vote, that we had to recall a warrant that we had to pass, and that got passed. Everything else, the budget, everything else passed pretty swimmingly, as they say.
WAMC: If you had to describe the back and forth about the lake tax issue, can you sort of break that down for us? What was the pro and con or the for and against there?
Well, I think it mostly had to do with really sort of oversight of the lake itself. Some people felt that by going to a lake tax district, or they called it like a lake conservation district, that it would sort of make it a little bit harder for the town itself to oversee some of the things that were happening with the lake. They felt like a smaller group of people might have a little more oversight or control of what happened with the lake, and by not having it, there would be more of, with the town and the town voters at town at town meeting would be able to have a little more oversight of what was going on at the lake. So, that was sort of kind of where the back and forth went.
Were there any other big items that were rejected by voters? Or was that the main one?
That was actually the main one. I don't believe that anything was rejected at all. Everything was pretty much passed with, there were no amendments to anything. There was a little bit of conversation because we were trying to- The only time there was really just a tiny bit of back and forth, but it was more like just trying to understand when things would happen as we tried, we also set, had a warrant that was setting a fall town meeting, a special town meeting that was specific to non-budgetary items, some things that were more around like zoning bylaws, things like that. So, we might, in the spring town meeting, we would concentrate more on financial issues and possibly other non-financial issues, but then after that, in the fall, we would look at sort of non-financial issues. And there was kind of a little bit of back and forth, but that was only just about really what the date was going to be, whether it's going to be November or October, and it ended up settling in November. So, that was the only other small thing.
Now looking at that operating budget, looking at these fiscal issues, how would you describe the current financial strategizing for Monterey? We've seen some communities with a lot of rate hikes and increased spending, other communities sort of knuckling down and trying to spend as little as possible. Walk us through it- How do things look for Monterrey?
Things look pretty good. Our overall budget went up 6%, a little over 6%, 6.7% or somewhere around there. But that was really had to do mostly with the fire department and trying to support them as best as possible. Everything else across the board went up 3% or 4%. So, it was just that one piece that had a big influence on the on the budget itself. We feel pretty good about the budget, feel pretty strong about it, and you know, just trying to get through that one little hump there. I think over the next few years, we'll be doing pretty good. We had some departments that, like the highway department, public works department, that didn't even have a 1% increase. And so, it was pretty good that we, everybody felt really good about the budget, realizing that there were some things that we just had to kind of level fund and like everybody, you know, getting hit with inflationary items and those sorts of things that kind of raise some of those basic dollars. But a lot of these a lot of our departments, they don't even have like a $5,000 budget. So, when they ask for $100 or $500 increase on a $5,000 budget sometimes or even less, it feels like it's a big hit, but overall, it's not. So, it went pretty well on that side too.
