Latest news with #Prop2½
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
ELECTION: Should Belchertown raise property taxes to fund school deficit?
BELCHERTOWN, Mass. (WWLP) – Polls open Monday morning in Belchertown for annual town elections. Voting happens at the high school starting at 8:30 am. running until 8 p.m. Positions are open on the select board, school committee, planning board, and more. The select board is the only contested race. Belchertown School System faces $2.1 million deficit, Prop 2½ override proposed There's also one ballot question asking residents if the town should raise property taxes by a total of nearly $3 million to fund municipal and school budgets for the next year. The override would allow the town to raise property taxes over the state's 2.5% Cap and in turn, generate more funding for the school system and possibly other town departments. Sample-Ballot-5-19-2025Download WWLP-22News, an NBC affiliate, began broadcasting in March 1953 to provide local news, network, syndicated, and local programming to western Massachusetts. Watch the 22News Digital Edition weekdays at 4 p.m. on Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Boston Globe
18-05-2025
- Business
- Boston Globe
Facing budget shortfalls, Mass. towns need to get creative
Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up The trend is also accelerating. More than 50 Massachusetts municipalities voted on overrides for 2025. Five years ago, it was 30, and in 2018, just 22. Dozens of municipalities and local school districts are fighting the same budget battle, with homeowners ultimately asked to pick up the slack. Municipalities should rely on more than just property tax hikes to balance their budgets, though. They should trim spending to the extent possible, including by regionalizing services like schools, emergency response, and public health, which might be cheaper to share with other communities. They should welcome new development that grows their tax base. Meanwhile, state lawmakers can help by giving municipalities more leeway to diversify their revenue streams so that they're not so completely at the mercy of property taxes and override votes. Advertisement That's especially true because the pressures on municipal budgets show no sign of abating. Education costs, especially for special ed and transportation, are projected to keep rising. Wages, health insurance, and utilities are also on the upswing. 'You start to add up all those things, and it's slowly crushing the budgets,' Adam Chapdelaine, the executive director of the Massachusetts Municipal Association, which represents city and town officials on Beacon Hill, said. Towns cannot simply pass increases of that magnitude on to taxpayers, because of Prop 2 ½, a 1980 referendum that overhauled and placed limits on local taxation. It requires municipalities to seek voter approval if they want to raise property taxes past the limits spelled out in the law. The measure was meant to act as a check on local overspending, and it has succeeded in that sense. But any time that inflation rises above prescribed tax limits, costs outgrow municipalities' abilities to raise revenue. Big budget lines, like local school districts, are the first to feel the squeeze. 'Having any revenue structure solely based on one type of revenue leads to potentially challenging outcomes when something affects that stream,' Doug Howgate, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, said. Especially in places where 2 ½ overrides fail or are not politically palatable, municipalities need to get creative. There are a few possible short-term relief valves. This year, the state has a $1.3 billion surplus from the 'millionaires tax' to be split between schools and transportation. The Massachusetts House and Senate are hashing out the breakdown of this money in the coming weeks, but schools should expect a sizable chunk. Advertisement In the long term, the rise in overrides should reopen urgent discussions about efficiency among the Commonwealth's splintered public school districts — which can only be meaningfully addressed through regionalization and cost-sharing campaigns. State initiatives like the Efficiency and Regionalization grant program, which helps municipalities with the one-time costs of consolidating school districts and other services, deserves more serious state funding. Current municipal grant allocations are capped at $200,000, limiting the program's scope. Municipalities should also be allowed to spread the tax burden. Governor Maura Healey refiled a bill this January allowing cities and towns to increase taxes on restaurant meals and motor vehicle excise fees, as well as hotel, motel, and rental stays. Local elected leaders have endorsed these proposals, and while the motor vehicle excise fee provision strikes us as unreasonable, more municipal authority to hike hotel and meal taxes would help them plug budget holes without raising property taxes. Ultimately, none of these measures will be able to fully mitigate the inevitable budget strain that will be on display during this year's town meetings. What they can offer is some flexibility in who shoulders the burden. 'Disruptive things are hard. Disruptive things are harder when there's nothing to make it go down easier,' Howgate said. 'There's no spoonful of sugar in a lot of this stuff.' Editorials represent the views of the Boston Globe Editorial Board. Follow us
Yahoo
05-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
‘Challenging year': Large number of Mass. school districts laying off teachers, cutting programs
Massachusetts is known for having the best public schools in the country. That distinction costs money, and across the state, a large number of school districts are facing unusually tough budget decisions. Programs are being cut, and teachers are being laid off. That's happening in North Andover. Brookline is struggling to close a multi-million-dollar budget gap. Newton is reeling from federal cuts. Framingham is losing a battle with inflation. It's estimated that Salem will need to let about 50 staff members go. 'This is my 12th year as a superintendent of schools in Massachusetts, and this is the most challenging year I've seen,' said Dr. Stephen Zrike, Ph.D., Salem school superintendent. Zrike says inflation is hitting school systems the same way that it's affecting households. 'Our energy costs have gone up, and also salaries. Our biggest budget item is personnel, and we want our staff to be paid competitively.' Higher costs are only a piece of the budget crunch. The needs of students and their families are changing and getting more complicated. These changes also lead to higher costs, according to Zrike. 'We have many, many more multilingual learners. We have more students with disabilities. We have many more unhoused students, right? The needs of our young people and our families continues to increase. It's not the same landscape as it was even a decade ago, or certainly 20 years ago.' Across the state, parents worry about their children as budgets are pared. One father said, 'We understand finances are always a concern. It must be for private companies, and it must be for government as well, but education is one of the most important elements of society.' A mother added, 'Reading and writing is a problems, and with COVID, it's gotten worse, so I think this is the worst time for them to be doing this to the children.' The financial problems cities and towns are facing are linked to the way schools are funded. The majority of their money is generated through municipal taxes. In Massachusetts, property tax increases are capped by Prop 2 ½. 'The challenge, even for a district that has property values that should sustain a really successful school system, is raising taxes, which is always a fight,' said UMass-Boston Professor Nick Juravich, Ph.D., an historian who specializes in education and labor issues. 'I think there is a real challenge to articulate at a town level, at a state level, this all in the state. Generationally, you may not be at the phase where you are in school, or have children in school, but you will benefit. Your children will benefit. Your communities will benefit.' State Senator Jason Lewis, Senate chair of the education committee, says he is seeing communities struggling with the budgets everywhere. 'We're seeing it in more affluent communities, less affluent communities, cities and towns.' Lewis says he and his colleagues are hearing loud and clear that many districts are in crisis mode. Another complicating factor is the end of COVID-19 relief funds. That program pumped about $2 billion into local schools. 'It was huge help to get us through the pandemic, not doubt about it,' explained Lewis. 'But it also pushed out further the reckoning with this budget crisis.' The good news is Lewis expects substantial relief in the next state budget cycle, which begins on July 1st. It's bolstered with new funds coming in from the so-called millionaire's tax. 'I'm very hopeful that this budget will include a record-high level for public education. I also expect we will provide historically high funding for special education.' That would be a relief for parents who have been anxious about deep cuts. One father told Boston 25 News 'It's sad we don't look more at other ways to save money before it kind of falls on the students, falls on the teachers.' Senator Lewis is also proposing a blue-ribbon commission to take a deeper diver into the overall way schools are funded in Massachusetts to see if they can create a better formula for distributing funds to schools. Download the FREE Boston 25 News app for breaking news alerts. Follow Boston 25 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch Boston 25 News NOW
