WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Mount Greylock Regional School Committee on Tuesday voted unanimously to send a budget to both its member towns with assessments that are higher than either town has signaled it wants to pay.

 

On a vote of 6-0, the committee agreed to submit a preliminary fiscal year 2016 budget with a 2.61 increase from the fiscal 2015 budget. That is the budget that will be considered at a pair of public hearings — at Lanesborough Elementary School on March 16 and at Mount Greylock in March 17.

 

The 2.61 percent increase is lower than 4.5 percent rise the MGRS Committee considered at its most recent meeting because of $150,000 gift from Williams College — most of which will be used to pay down the bond on the 2009 locker room roof/boiler replacement project.

 

But a 2.61 percent increase is still more than Lanesborough officials have told Mount Greylock the town will accept.

 

"We did just meet with Lanesborough's Finance Commmittee and went over the preliminary budget, and we pretty much got the response you'd expect," Chairwoman Carolyn Greene said in a meeting telecast on Williamstown's community access television station, Willinet. "They want us at 1 percent, and currently there is a $175,000 difference between what we are requesting and what they are hoping we will eventually come in at."

 

Based on level funding from the commonwealth — a revenue stream that may not be determined until after the annual town meeting votes in both member towns — Mount Greylock projects that the 2.61 percent increase in the operating budget would translate into a 7.63 percent rise in the assessment to Lanesborough and an 8.59 percent rise in the assessment to Williamstown.

 

"In dollar figures, that's $200,211 to Lanesborough and $405,926 to Williamstown," Greene said. "Again, this is a preliminary budget. The numbers are going to change. But we have to submit something to the towns."

 

While Lanesborough officials have been vocal in their opposition to increased assessment, the 8.59 percent rise may not be any more palatable in Williamstown, where the elementary school and other town departments are seeing their budgets rise by just 2.5 percent in fiscal 2016.

 

While the regional junior-senior high school had not formally submitted a budget — before Tuesday — the Williamstown's proposed fiscal 2016 budget includes a similar 2.5 percent hike for Mount Greylock, from $4.7 million to $4.8 million, a difference of $118,138.

 

Committee member Wendy Penner asked why the town assessment percentage increases were so much higher than the 2.61 percent increase in the bottom line of the budget.

 

"The primary reasons are revenues," Business Manager Lynn Bassett explained. "Revenues [outside of town assessments] are decreasing or staying static. If the state doesn't kick it in, it throws it over to the towns and the towns need to kick it in.

 

"It shifts the responsibility from the state to the towns. That's why towns' assessments keep going up."

 

Greene pointed out that the town assessments the last couple of years were kept artificially low by spending from reserve accounts that have now been depleted.

 

Principal Mary MacDonald laid out some of the cuts that brought the budget down to the 2.61 percent increase approved on Tuesday night. Those include the elimination of all late buses, reducing the number of playing dates for athletic teams to their respective league minimums and issuing "reduction in force" letters to two full-time teachers and one part-time teacher.

 

"We've preserved as much programming as possible so when students come to Mount Greylock next year, they have a school they know," MacDonald said. "They won't have as much choice. Classes will be larger. The schedules won't be as flexible. But what we're hoping is students will have the kinds of rich experiences they've had.

 

"Should we be asked to cut further, the pinch will be that much sharper and the school will start to look different."

 

Committee member Steven Miller, who was appointed to the panel this winter, said he was afraid that a "different" Mount Greylock would lose enrollment.

 

"One of the things that has concerned me is several people have talked to me about the fact that they're trying to decide whether they want their kids to go to Mount Greylock," Miller said

 

In other business on Tuesday, Greene reported that district representatives and the Massachusetts School Building Authority have selected Design Partnership of Cambridge to be the design firm for Mount Greylock's building project.

 

Past clients for the firm include Taunton, Acton-Boxborough, Manchester and Pembroke High Schools as well as the renovation of historic Murdock Hall at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams.

 

Mount Greylock is currently negotiating a contract with Design Partnership, and the committee on Tuesday set a Thursday, March 5, meeting at 3 p.m. to approve the final contract.

 

The school committee also voted to approve a 2015-16 school calendar that is aligned with the calendar at Williamstown Elementary School. The school year for students will begin on Wednesday, Sept. 2 with the last day of final exams (pending snow days) on Tuesday, June 14, 2016. Lanesborough Elementary School has not announced its recommended calendar, Greene said.