Officials gird for tax hike defeat

Georgetown's public schools have crowded classrooms, local roads are riddled with potholes, and the public safety building has a leaky roof, but given the town's bleak fiscal picture, those issues will not be addressed anytime soon.

Simply stated, the town has too many bills and too little cash.

"Each of the past few years, we've had to make do with less," said Selectman Mathew Vincent. "Almost all of the new revenue we get under the levy limits imposed by Proposition 2 1/2 is consumed just by health insurance costs and our pension liabilities."

To help the town weather the cash crunch, its leaders are asking voters to approve the collection of more than $1 million in new property taxes..

Town Meeting voters May 7 will consider an override of Proposition 2 1/2, the state's property tax cap law, to allow the tax hike.

If they approve, and a majority of voters OK the override in town elections May 14, the new tax rate would take effect in fiscal 2008, beginning July 1.

The property tax bill for the owner of the average single-family home, assessed at $412,485, would swell by $334, allowing the town to embrace an operating budget of $23.5 5 million.

Should the override fail, the town would be forced to make deep cuts to municipal services and school spending to hold the town's expenses at $22.49 million.

"I hope the override is passed," said Vincent. "I will despair if it isn't. The consequences of a failed override would be draconian. We would have to cut $100,000 from the town's operating budget, resulting in reduced services and layoffs."

Already, things are tight at Town Hall. Departments are short-staffed. Municipal offices are closed Fridays and not open evenings. The highway department's road maintenance budget isn't enough to resurface even a 1-mile section of road. And the leaky roof and mold issues that plague the public safety building remain on the back burner.

With this grim reality in mind, the three-member Board of Selectmen is expected to take a hard look at the town's spending plans tomorrow evening and craft a list of cuts that would be implemented at Town Hall should the override proposal fail.

The School Committee has already undertaken a similar exercise and determined that a failed override would translate into the loss of the district's facilities manager, a custodian, and several full-time teachers, including one fourth-grade teacher at the Penn Brook School.

The override proposal comes as Georgetown schools are under intense scrutiny: The accreditation of the middle-high school is threatened, and on 'warning' status. The Commission on Public Secondary Schools -- an arm of the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, which provides voluntary accreditation to public and private educational institutions in New England -- issued the warning in November. The independent commission criticized Georgetown for failing to provide adequate and reliable funding for the school.

According to Superintendent Larry Borin, while the commission's report was specific to the middle-high school, inadequate funding is a districtwide issue. He noted that Georgetown spends just $7,680 per student, the lowest per-pupil expenditure for all K-12 school systems in the state for the 2005-06 school year, according to the state Department of Education.

With less than a month to go before Town Meeting, a group of concerned residents is embarking on an aggressive grass-roots campaign to drum up support for the proposed override in a town that has in the past been reticent. Georgetown voters last year rejected two separate requests for overrides: One would have allocated $381,167 to the school system; the other would have enabled the town to spend $250,000 to repair the dilapidated Bailey Lane bridge.

"We're trying to get people out to vote," said Elisabeth Tollman, chairwoman of Believe in Georgetown, a local political action committee and co founder of Georgetown Concerned Residents, a group dedicated to improving the town.

"We've reached a make-it or break-it point," Tollman said. "With our current funding levels, we are not able to sustain the needs of the town. A lack of funding for the schools has resulted in a decline in performance on the MCAS, and a lack of funding for the town has made it impossible for our elected and appointed town leaders to engage in the kind of long-term planning that is needed to address our community's needs."

However, the town's approach to paying for public services by relying on revenues raised through an override worries some Georgetown residents, including Selectman Lonnie Brennan. He blamed financial mismanagement for the town's fiscal woes and questioned why more than 60 teachers will receive pay raises in excess of 6 percent in fiscal 2008 and several veteran educators will collect a $900 "longevity bonus," given the town's financial troubles.

"There are those in town who will scream doom and gloom and say that the override is needed, but I think it's excessive," said Brennan. "Proponents of the override will talk about our declining MCAS scores and the fact that students at the Penn Brook School are still using a science textbook from 1979, but obviously school officials didn't see a need in all these years to replace that book with a more updated version, so it must still be of value. The Bible's 2,000 years old, and I see nothing wrong with having an old Bible.

"This override is needed to fund teacher salaries, period," said Brennan, whose children attend the local public schools. "It's their override. Frankly, I don't see how increasing teacher salaries is going to improve MCAS scores.

"In my mind, the issue isn't how much the override is going to cost taxpayers. If it were going to cost just $10 per homeowner, I would still be opposed to it because I think it encourages bad behavior," Brennan said. "It says to those who have mismanaged town funds, 'go ahead and continue your mismanagement.' "

Brenda J. Buote may be reached at bbuote@globe.com