Proponents: Override a must or bust
By Lindsay Sauvageau JOURNAL CORRESPONDENT

On June 12, Ashburnham and Westminster residents will put their thoughts on paper, voting whether or not to approve the Proposition 2 ½ school budget override, which proponents say is an increase merely to maintain district standards.

"The state mandates are unfunded and the responsibility is placed on the backs of the taxpayers," said Regional School Committee Chairman David Christianson. "This is a level services budget. We're not adding anything, the money will simply go to upkeep. It's not earmarked for anything specific."

Christianson says the override is a temporary solution to a state problem.

"The $1.2 million shortfall we are experiencing is a fundamental problem at the state level," he said. "One point that everyone agrees on is that for the last five or six years, when Chapter 70 money stopped coming in and state aid continued to drop off, the responsibility has fallen on the two towns. The last successful override was in 2004, which came after several years of failed overrides and we had to reduce programs, head count, everything. Now the override is a stop gap to maintain the budget so we don't fall back into that deficit."

If the override passes, it will translate to a 76-cent increase per $1,000 on the tax bill in Ashburnham and the equivalent of 72-cents per $1,000 of house valuations in Westminster.

Voters in Westminster approved the request for $729,309 to subsidize the school budget and voters in Ashburnham voted to approve the $498,603 increase in town aid at their annual town meetings. This approval is what has sent the request money to the ballot box in both towns on Tuesday, June 12. The contributions from each town are based on the percent of students attending the school district from that town.

If voters in one town reject the additional funding the money does not get appropriated to the school district.

Ashburnham Town Administrator Kevin Paicos says that Ashburnham and Westminster's financial responsibilities to the school system have always been unequal.

Christianson says the difference stems from a regional agreement.

"Forty-five years ago when the Ash- West School District was being created, each town was assessed based on their enrollment," he said. "Right now I believe the split is something like 55 percent in Westminster and 45 percent in Ashburnham."

Christianson says no matter what happens in the towns, the state's lack of support has made it a tough situation and must be addressed in some way.

"In the long-term we have to try to understand how to share the responsibility more on the state level. This is not a sustainable model. We can look at local solutions but there just aren't a lot of options. To those that tell me they're going to vote 'no' to send a message to Beacon Hill I say it's not going to do any good. There's not going to be an automatic change and we're just going to end up balancing things on the backs of the kids. The override is a short-term fix while we look for longterm solutions."