The first vote passed by 9 votes
but was petitioned,
the second vote failed by 14
By Curt Peterson
The Hartland school budget revote on May 28 failed by 14 votes – 537 to 551. Two days later the School Board held an emergency meeting to strategize its next move.
Chair Nicki Buck explained the board can propose a budget with just seven days’ warning as many times as it takes for one to pass. If unsuccessful before July 1, the state will authorize the district to borrow 87% of the proposed budget, at the current rate of 6.45% interest, to operate until a budget finally passes.
According to Christine Bourne, Windsor Southeast supervisor, if the board borrowed 87% of $10,000,000 ($8,700,000), over six months the interest cost would be $280,575, paid by the taxpayers.
The board decided not to fill a vacated teaching position, saving $90,939, and agreed to put the resulting budget of $10,905,208 up for a vote again on Tuesday, June 11.
With the shock of a predicted 30% education property rate increase in February, the School Board rescinded its original FY2025 budget before Town Meeting in March. Voters were to ignore the budget on the ballot.
For a modest $200,000 Hartland home, the ed tax increase would be approximate $150/month, the result of an adjustment to taxable market value called the Common Level of Appraisal (CLA). The state estimates current market values in each town, compares them with their Grand List value, and the CLA is meant to make up the difference.
Hartland properties were reappraised just five years ago, but property values have significantly increased since then.
The new budget will reduce the tax increase cost to $145/month instead of $150, principal Lyndsie Perkins said.
Bourne said each budget vote costs the town approximately $1,400.
“We reduced the budget by $500,000 for the May 28 vote,” Buck said, “cutting multiple positions and eliminating funding for badly needed playground upgrades.”
That budget passed by just nine votes out of about 600. There are over 2,900 registered Hartland voters.
The close vote inspired a petition for a revote based on the low turnout and slim margin. But the petition was stapled on the right side of a red folder, and a table showing the effect of the property tax increase at various home values was stapled on the left, clearly insinuating, incorrectly, that the school budget drove the increase.
“Without the CLA adjustment our original budget would have resulted in a level tax rate from this year,” Buck said.
“Only 5% of the budget is discretionary,” she told the Mountain Times. The other “95% is mandated by the state and standards of quality education. Salaries are negotiated by the state. Healthcare premiums, which increased more than 13%, are negotiated by the state. The state stopped funding school infrastructure maintenance, repair and construction in 2017. The Legislature has imposed mandates for mental health services, afternoon programs, universal lunch and summer meal support, with no funding. All of these costs are in the budget because they have to be in the budget.”
Hartland listers confirm that the state’s market value is reasonably close to what they estimate.
According to selectman and former town clerk Clyde Jenne, the voting was steady — about 1,100 voters turned out — and civil.
“At one point the automatic tabulator jammed,” Jenne told the Mountain
Times. “Nancy Murphy admitted she had inserted her husband’s ballot into the machine before it had processed hers fully, and it jammed.”
There’s a locked wooden box containing the mailed-in ballots and pre-votes from the clerk’s office. While the tabulator was being fixed, people put their ballots into the box, and they were tabulated with the others in the box after the polls closed.
The school board has called a second emergency meeting for Wednesday evening, June 5.
