The first installment of the annual town meeting Saturday saw residents of the Southern Berkshires’ largest community sign off on a $16.4 million budget for the coming fiscal year – down just under 2% from the current year – and a school budget of almost $24 million. Attendees voted to table a $240,000 request from the regional ambulance squad that would serve as the town’s share of two new vehicles for the nonprofit’s fleet.
“Our ambulance squad down here, Southern Berkshire Ambulance Squad, does a great job. No one's questioning that," Great Barrington Selectboard Vice Chair Eric Gabriel told WAMC. "But in these tough budget times, it's hard to come back each year with significant increases.”
That request came on the heels of another request from the squad for around $415,000 of Great Barrington’s cash reserves to support ambulance services in the town - a number amended up from around $328,000 during the meeting. While voters approved the move after an extended debate, the follow-up ask for the additional $240,000 was apparently a bridge too far.
“We beat these ambulances to death. I mean, we do over 3,000 calls a year. I mean, that's a lot of calls in the snow, in the sleet, in the snow with salt, and this is capital equipment, it needs to be replaced from time and again," said former Stockbridge Select Board member and chief financial officer of the Southern Berkshire Ambulance Squad Patrick White." So, we brought forth a budget in November that we presented to the towns that disclosed that we needed to replace these ambulances.”
Five of the six towns covered by the emergency response service approved their shares of the spending, with Great Barrington as the sole outlier.
“The difference between what I asked for and what was ultimately approved between both the capital and the operating budget worked out to about $30 a taxpayer," continued White. "We live in aging communities. If you're 65 or older, you're four times more likely to need an ambulance during the year than if you're 45 or under. And the reality is that this has to work.”
The SBAS says its struggle to secure funding is a microcosm of nationwide ripples from the harsh spending cuts of the second Trump presidency and the looming specter of artificial intelligence.
“There's been a trillion dollars in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid," said White. "So, my sense is, in the first quarter, we took a big hit on insurance revenue, both from that and from this new AI impact. Two years ago, commercial ambulances, when we turned in the insurance request, 99% were getting approved. That's down to about 65% now, because all these insurers are now using AI to nitpick the submissions and look for any reason they can to deny it and make us resubmit it.”
White says the squad – which is currently negotiating terms for a three-year contract with Great Barrington – will survive through 2026 just fine regardless of the vote.
“The people of South County are incredibly generous," he told WAMC. "We had over a thousand donors last year, and this is south of Lee and Lenox – in a community that has about 8,000 residents, alright? It's maybe 9,000. It's a great, generous community.”
During Monday night’s session, with another 11 articles left to deal with after Saturday’s four-hour-long meeting, town voters approved a Seasonal Community designation from the commonwealth. It opens up resources to towns that experience population fluctuation during different periods of the year.
“Great Barrington doesn't necessarily fall under the classic designation for this. But since we're surrounded by seasonal communities, and we're the hub for all these Southern Berkshire towns that experience 50% to 60% seasonal occupant occupancy, so we are unique in this, and all these tools that it offers is going to be very beneficial for us," said Great Barrington Selectboard Vice Chair Eric Gabriel. “We also supply most of the affordable housing, and this is going to be able to help us designate it for our essential services, whether it's firemen, police officers, EMTs, there's even a clause for artists, teachers, and that's going to just make it easier for us to still continue to build affordable housing for these community members, but also direct them to the ones that we really need. Because a lot of these other building developments that we've been successful with, we don't get that much say with them.”
The final articles on the warrant were citizens petitions about residential tax exemptions. Proponents argued it would shift the town’s tax burden to properties like vacation homes, expensive homes, and properties not occupied by their owners. Voters overwhelming rejected the move.
“After our town assessor gave us the numbers on how it would work, I think it kind of got promoted in a way that wasn't fully accurate for us," said Gabriel. "And in the town of Great Barrington, although we are designated as a seasonal community, a lot of people that were going to get affected by that were year-round residents, whether their houses had exploded in value since the pandemic and the way real estate's going down here or not, but it wasn't going to be affecting just seasonal homeowners. So, I felt it was a little misleading, and I think everybody caught on.”
The next major municipal event for Great Barrington is the town election on Tuesday.
