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Date: 11/20/2023
BELCHERTOWN — The School Committee and Select Board have the dates for a special town election and special Town Meeting at which voters will weigh in on the proposed Jabish Brook Middle School project.
The election will take place on June 17, 2024, followed by the Town Meeting on June 24, 2024.
The election will be a referendum vote and will ask the town if they are in favor of building a new middle school at the proposed cost.
If that ballot passes, then the following week the community will get together at a Special Town Meeting to once again discuss the project and cost.
The proposed project needs to pass twice to be approved.
Due to the expected turnout, the cost for the election and Town Meeting is estimated to be approximately $45,000.
Town Administrator Steve Williams remembers the turnout for the discussion that took place on expanding the Clapp Memorial Library years ago and is using those turnout numbers to prepare.
He said, “This is going to be very similar to the vote that we took years back for the expansion of the library. We had nearly 2,000 people in that high school, and we had both the auditorium and gymnasium set up for the meeting so a big chunk of that cost is going to be hiring a company that can run in the meeting in two different locations. Similar to what we did in 2020 with Town Meeting at the height of the pandemic where we had a meeting set up inside and outside. The cost for that was nearly $15,000.”
Williams added that since costs are always changing, and the election and Town Meeting are a few months away that he is rounding up to $20,000 for Town Meeting.
“From what I can tell we are still on that $40,000 to $45,000 range for not only the election but for the town meeting. The election costs haven’t changed any but the Town Meeting costs, it seem like they bounce around by a few thousand dollars but nothing significant unfortunately,” Williams said.
For the special town election, Williams worked with Town Clerk Terry Camerlin to figure out the cost for that.
The list of expenses includes printing of the ballots for $2,500, election worker salaries $3,600, programming and memory cards $1,900, supplies $500, extra staff time for mail-in ballots $1,500, postage for vote by mail absentee ballots $6,000 to $7,000, early in-person voting costs are $700, police coverage for the day $1,700.
That brings the initial cost for the special town election to between $18,000 to $19,000.
The town will also have to research different option for possibly renting or borrowing more electronic clickers for Town Meeting since they only have approximately 300.
At the Nov. 6 Select Board meeting Williams provided some updates to the board.
Williams said that he is still researching different ways to try and cut the cost of both events including renting a circus tent that everyone could fit under, secret ballots or everyone holding up a yes or no card.
He added, “We have discussed a secret ballot so everyone would have a card and they would drop it in a box. The only downside to that is we have to count before people leave the room but that would allow full accountability for all the votes and make it very private. We are going through this planning, but we go up in one side and down a little in the other and we keep coming back to that $40,000 to $45,000 range.”
The Select Board discussed using either free cash or American Rescue Plan Act funds but said they needed a few more weeks and the final numbers before deciding which way to go.
Select Board Chair Ed Boscher met with the School Committee at its Nov. 14 meeting to discuss the possibility the committee could commit paying $7,500 towards the total cost.
School Committee Chair Heidi Gutekenst said, “I struggled with this because one, ARPA funds can pay for this, and we just returned some ARPA funds that teachers weren’t eligible for and two we already had our budget reduced last year by $485,000.”
In March, the Belchertown School Department was awarded $617,000 in ARPA funds to use from the Select Board to be able to pay its employees who worked during the coronavirus pandemic.
Superintendent Brian Cameron said that the schools only needed to use $527,000 and returned the extra $90,000 back to the ARPA bucket.
Boscher added, “It’s not even funny how much these costs. Steve is looking for ways to reduce the cost of the election. They are looking for reasonable costs but it’s going to be tough.”
The group decided that Williams will keep in contact with the School Committee and Cameron as the election and Town Meeting cost starts to take shape before agreeing to help pay the total.