Posted by JenAudley - Thu, Aug 5, 2010, 11:16 P

Montague Town Meeting Finds No Compromise on G-M Budget

By David Detmold - A divided Montague town meeting on Thursday, August 5th voted down a compromise motion to meet the Gill-Montague School District halfway to plug a roughly $380,000 gap between what the town considers an affordable school assessment, and the $16.4 million budget the school committee believes is needed to operate the district schools.

Precinct 1's Jeff Singleton, a school committee member, cautioned town meeting members to wait until the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) meets with town and school officials in the coming months to work out a long term plan for fiscal stability for the G-M schools before approving a compromise budget. "Wait until November so we can get a true compromise, with a plan," Singleton said.

In the end, by a vote of 40 to 37, the majority of town meeting members sided with him, voting down the compromise and leaving the Gill-Montague schools without an approved budget. For the third year in a row, the question of what level of school funding is affordable to the member towns and necessary for the district's operation will go to a district-wide meeting open to all town voters in Gill and Montague in the fall.

For the last two years, the special Gill-Montague district meetings have failed to approve a budget number the schools could live with. That impasse has led to two years of fiscal oversight of the district by the DESE.

This year, all sides seem inclined to compromise, but the timing of that compromise may depend on further meetings, and appears to hinge on developing a blueprint for a five-year plan for fiscal stability agreed to by all parties, including the state.