Last night’s vote to hand over $1.5 million to the Bridgewater Raynham Regional School District will have some definite repercussions throughout the Town. First off, there will be a Special Town Meeting to decide from which Town Departments the $1.5 million will come. As part of that meeting, there will also be a vote on an override proposal to restore funding to those same departments plus add more in order to offset recent budget cuts. I guess the Town figures if the School District can have a 9.3% increase to their budget, then they should be able to increase the Town budget by a small amount as well.
A flier was placed outside of last night’s meeting which details a “Preliminary Budget Outline” presented by the Advisory Board and the Board of Selectmen. This flier details where the $1.5 million in cuts will come from as well as a plan for a $2.2 million override. By my unofficial estimate, this would mean an average tax increase of about $320. Now the voters will have to choose between cutting essential town services or passing a tax increase. Services which have already been scaled back in order to keep up previous School Budget increases. With last night’s vote, the Town of Bridgewater is spending over 60% (including debt service) of its $38.7 million budget on education. We are being directed to make cuts to only the much smaller Town side of the budget.
Aside from the budget repercussions, there are sure to be other ramifications of last night’s vote. About 53% of Bridgewater voters voted on June 16th against an override. That vote directly told the Town Administration and the School District to live within their budgets. Last night, less than 15% of Bridgewater voters by a slim 76 vote margin directed the Town to give money to the School District anyway. Which vote was binding? Of course, it was the vote with far less input from the citizens of Bridgewater. And, the citizens who voted on June 16th, but couldn’t make it to the Town Meeting were completely left out of the process. Many citizens are frustrated by the events, and feel that they shouldn’t even bother voting in Town elections any longer.
What may be just as bad in the long run is that now the School District has little to no incentive to rein in spending, which is what the voters have wanted all along. The School District just didn’t wake up one day and make their teachers some of the best paid in the entire state. It was a long process of hefty raise after hefty raise. In order to bring the salaries back in line, the School Committee must endure a similar long process of holding the line on current salaries. Unfortunately, they have not shown the willingness to do so, and now they have all the money they want and don’t have to.
Lastly, we wanted to thank all those voters who were able to take a significant amount of time out of their lives to vote on this issue. We remain confident that if an election was held, the motion would have failed. However, the law stipulated a different path, and 1,082 voters got to decide the course of action for over 25,000 Bridgewater residents.