Amherst Center: The overriding issue

Published on June 26, 2009

We're ready to cry uncle! We're closing a school. We're closing two pools. We've practically stopped fixing potholes. We've eliminated all town funding of human service agencies, slashed recreation support, cut senior center staff. We are cutting 50 school positions, dozens of town positions, a boatload of child and elderly programs. Uncle!

For the past eight years, our town has been facing costs that have outpaced revenues. Each year the town has cut a bit here, a bit there, streamlined processes, reorganized, outsourced, applied for more grants, raised fees to the limits ($210 for kids on the basketball team, anyone?).

But here we are. Hitting the proverbial wall as the cratered economy meets skyrocketing health care and energy costs, plummeting state aid, and a 2.5 percent limit on tax increases to create the perfect storm for our little Amherst. We would need an extra $6.9 million to maintain the schools and town services in 2010 as they were in 2009.

Your intrepid columnists have spent the most painful nights at Town Meeting this month, watching many of the things we love about our town being dismantled. It's been soul-killing to vote to close schools, closing pools, laying off teachers and town workers and offloading services for our poorest and hungriest to the vagaries of the grants process. But we just don't have the dough.

We must vote a balanced budget, where costs = revenue. We've been attacking the cost side (see the pain above). But we won't survive this crisis with our town intact without working both sides of the equation.

It's time to attack the revenue side.

The folks in Northampton are doing it. The folks in Sunderland are looking at theirs. No, it's not some new viral YouTube video, it's a Proposition 21/2 override! Folks all over the state are doing it - recognizing that cities and towns can't just keep cutting forever, and that the 2.5 percent limit is an arbitrary number, they're passing overrides this year at a record pace.

This year in Amherst, for the first time in our memory, Town Meeting members offered budget amendments to restore programs contingent on the passage of an override. But unfortunately it's too late for this year. The soonest an override could be scheduled is September, at which point the fiscal year will already be three months old.

We're ready to cry uncle. We're ready for an override. But we voted these recent override-contingent amendments down. Amherst has only passed two overrides to support the ongoing budget in the last 25 years. So when we decide to do it, we need to do it right.

We know from past experience that it takes time, planning, coordination and solid communication to pass a tax increase. We need to develop a multi-year budget plan. We need to demonstrate administrative efficiencies. We need to coordinate school and town departments and prioritize the services we need to save. We need to build a coalition of town citizens who will work to save our town. All of this takes time.

Northampton passed a large override with resounding support. Meanwhile, Amherst has been doing the hard work of cutting our annual operations to a leaner core. It's been painful, but it should put us in a better place for a fiscally sustainable budget going forward. Any revenue increases will last longer and go farther because we've made some hard choices these past few years.

But enough is enough. We can't keep going like this. Uncle, already!

We believe that we should begin working this summer to pass a Proposition 21/2 override at the annual Town Election in March 2010.

If you are interested in joining a Vote YES! coalition for an override in Amherst, please contact us at yes@sustainableamherst.org.

We look forward to working with others of all political stripes on this effort in the next year. We can do this. Let's get started.

Amherst Center is a monthly column which appears in The Amherst Bulletin that seeks to portray local issues from a centrist perspective. It is written by Town Meeting members Baer Tierkel and Clare Bertrand and School Committee member Andy Churchill. Amherst Center appears on the last Friday of each month.