Teaching positions slated for cuts include a music teacher, a middle school special education teacher and 2 elementary school positions.
MONSON – The meals tax and stretch energy building code, along with budget cuts, including 4.5 teaching positions, and a town government study review, will face voters at the annual Town Meeting on Monday at 7 p.m. at Granite Valley Middle School on Thompson Street.
There are 30 articles on the warrant, which also will feature requests to videotape all future Town Meetings and Finance Committee meetings.
The .75 percent meals tax, which was defeated at a special Town Meeting in 2009, is on the warrant again because it would generate revenue for the cash-strapped town, approximately $29,000 a year, according to Town Administrator Gretchen E. Neggers.
"We desperately need revenue," Neggers said. "Other communities have adopted it with no visible impact."
Gretchen E. NeggersOpponents two years ago had expressed concern about businesses losing customers, or closing, because of the impact of the meals tax.
"We need to keep asking because we have real serious needs here. But it is the people's choice," Neggers said.
The stretch code, an appendix to the state building energy code, requires stricter energy efficiency requirements in new residential and many new commercial buildings, as well as residential additions. And while it could add an additional $3,000 in building expenses for the average single-family home, and 1 to 3 percent in additional costs for commercial structures, homeowners and building owners should save on energy costs in the long run as energy efficiency is expected to improve by 20 percent.
Neggers said details about the stretch code are on the town's website, www.monson-ma.gov. A Pioneer Valley Planning Commission representative also will attend the Town Meeting to explain it, she said.
School Superintendent Patrice L. Dardenne said budget cuts are forcing the reduction of a music teacher, which recently was restored in January thanks to federal funds, along with a special education teacher at the middle school, and two teachers at Quarry Hill Community School, likely in the third and fourth grades. A full-time gifted and talented teacher at Quarry Hill will be reduced to part-time. The cuts total $230,000. The school budget for fiscal 2012 is $9.9 million, a reduction from last year's $10 million.
Dardenne said the budget is being balanced with approximately $500,000 in federal and state grants.
The total budget for fiscal 2012 is $22 million, compared to fiscal 2011's $23 million. A large part of the reduction is due to the debt ending for the elementary school construction project, Neggers said.
The town is proposing to fund its portion of the Pathfinder Regional School District budget at $897,797, which is $10,000 less than what Pathfinder wanted. Neggers said they want to remove the capital expenditures from the school's budget request.
"Usually Monson does that as a statement. We don't have a single dollar in our budget for capital improvements," Neggers said.
If the other member towns in the Pathfinder district approve their assessments, Monson will have to pony up the extra $10,000. Pathfinder Superintendent Gerald L. Paist said the fiscal 2012 Pathfinder budget is $12.5 million, a 1.8 percent increase over last year. The capital items include a new milling machine, refrigeration equipment for culinary arts and workbenches for electronics.
"I'm sorry that they're doing that," Paist said about Monson. "At a vocational school, capital equipment is like textbooks in a regular high school."
Neggers said fuel costs and healthcare drove budget increases. Healthcare expenses alone increased 16.5 percent, or $323,000, over fiscal 2011.
The budget also includes 2 percent raises for 15-20 non-union employees, who agreed to pay a higher portion of their health insurance costs. They all will contribute 30 percent toward their plan, whether it is for an individual or family.
"These are hard times and I think we are doing the best we can. Services are being sustained," Neggers said about the budget.