New law allows capital funding for regional school districts
By Caitlyn Kelleher JOURNAL REPORTER

Voters in Ashburnham and Westminster will legally be able to considering funding a capital plan for the regional school after this week.

After more than a year of work by local officials, area Legislators and members of the regional school caucuses of the Legislature and the Massachusetts Association of School Committees, Gov. Deval Patrick was expected to sign House Bill 586 into law this week.

If Patrick doesn't sign the bill by Aug. 16, it becomes law as it enacted by the Legislature.

The law will allow regional school districts to fund capital projects with one-year exceptions to Proposition 2 1/2 after receiving a positive vote at a ballot election.

"It's good for any regional school district," said Selectman Christopher Gagnon.

Towns and single-town school districts have been allowed to fund capital purchases, such as vehicles, building repairs and maintenance projects, through this method since the institution of Proposition 2 1/2.

"The thing I've heard over and over again is that regional schools aren't taken into consideration when legislation is passed," said state Rep. Cleon Turner. "This bill would simply allow them to ask towns for separate, one-time capital expenditure, thereby keeping a one-time expenditure out of a permanent Proposition 2 ½ override request."

Turner is the chairman of the legislature's Regional School Caucus.

Ashburnham and Westminster town officials found out that the regional school district could not fund capital projects under the same process as towns after a ballot question in 2006 to fund one year of the district's five-year capital plan passed. The state Department of Revenue made a oneyear exception allowing the funding and town and state officials began to work to revise the law.

Ellen Holmes, a member of the Ashburnham-Westminster Regional School Committee and the chairwoman of the Regional School Committee for the Massachusetts Association of School Committees, has lobbied hard for the bill to pass.

Holmes was very happy when she received word about the bill's passage from state Sen. Stephen Brewer's office.

A ballot question to fund another year of the district's five-year capital plan through a Proposition 2 1/2 exception failed at the ballot in June.