We’re under-funded. We’ve been cut $1.3 million. The facts are the facts. We’ll try to do the best that we can.”

Nancy Stanton Cross

We are at a point now where we really can’t cut too many places, if any, and if we do make cuts, people are going to feel it.”

James Hartnett

We are at critical mass now. There’s nothing to cut anymore. When I say there’s nothing to cut anymore, I challenge anybody: Bring in any auditor you want, bring in any expert you want, see what you can cut.”

Thomas Aubin

With July’s failure of the $3 million override vote still fresh in their minds, members of the finance committee, select board, school department and others met last Wednesday to get an early jump on budget preparations for the coming 2024-25 fiscal year, one that promises to be as tough as any they’ve faced in some time.

Over the course of the two-hour discussion that was often bleak, school brass, the town administrator and others lamented the current state of Westport’s finances, brain-stormed ways to improve the town’s bottom line, spoke about the need to develop long term spending plans and projections, and fretted about upcoming union negotiations, immigrants, special education costs and many other unknowns.

When they were done they left, as they have at similar meetings over the past year, without a clear indication of how to stop Westport’s continual slide into the red as the town heads into the budget season.

“We were hopeful on a revenue stream from an override for additional taxes, and that did not pass. So now we’re faced with managing this budget and balancing this budget to be sustainable,” said Fincom chairwoman Karen Raus. “How do we get there?”

Following are some  of the issues brought up at the meeting:

Education issues and costs

Westport Community Schools, which was given $500,000 in free cash to supplement its budget this current budget year, is stretched as tightly financially as it can be without something giving, Superintendent Thomas Aubin said.

With the failure of the override in late July, Aubin said the district has reduced some elementary school classes, increasing class sizes in grades one through three as a result and letting go four teacher’s assistants.

Even as things stand currently, “we’re deeply concerned about the fact that if we play the year out, we’re probably short $30,000 to $50,000, unless we can find a big savings from somewhere,” Aubin said.

Rural aid and enrollment?

Ironically, though a bill was recently passed by the legislature to help fund rural schools facing a loss of students, Aubin said the mostly rural Westport is “bucking that state trend.”

The district is growing, he said — as of the first of October, 60 new students had enrolled this year and over the past two years, the number is more than 100.

Special education and transportation

Aubin said he worries for the future on many fronts, not the least of which are the soaring cost of transportation and special education.

Special education costs are one of the district’s bigger accounts, and Aubin said that even with the departure this current year of nine students whose out of district tuition and transportation cost the district about $755,000, there will be new costs — four new special needs students have entered the district, he said, “and we don’t know what their needs are” yet.

“We absolutely fear out of district placements because (of the) tuition and ... the cost of transportation,” Aubin said. Right now 21 percent of the district’s students are in special education, but their costs represent 27 percent of the district’s budget. He sees that number rising to 30 percent, “and the cost is going to continue to rise.”

Another irony: Though the district “let go” four teacher assistants, new special education needs this year have required them to hire five new teachers’ assistants.

Immigration impact?

Nancy Stanton Cross, of the school committee, said the town needs to look closely at the influx of documented immigrants that has increased across the Commonwealth.

In early August, Governor Maura Healey declared a State of Emergency related to the influx, which according to State House figures now stands at about 6,300 migrant families now being sheltered in the state.

Under the state of emergency, many of those migrants are being housed in other towns in hotels and motels. School districts are receiving $104 per day to cover migrant students’ education, and about 50 percent of the transportation costs required to get them back and forth to school.

Though Stanton Cross said she hasn’t heard if any migrants are yet being housed in Westport, she said the town should look into it, and also instruct health inspectors to make sure the town’s lodging houses are safe.

She also suggested changing the tax rate for hotels and motels, if Westport starts seeing an influx.

“At $104 (per day) I don’t know how we deal with it,” she said. “If motels are going to take in money ... it should be off the backs of the taxpayers. We’re in a worse place than other districts (currently receiving migrant students) are financially. Hotels need to understand that taxes are on the table if they take them in.”

She recommended that town officials file Freedom of Information Act requests to find out if migrants are or will be housed here. Though town officials could ask hoteliers directly, “they don’t have to tell you the truth.”

Such an influx here “would be an unmitigated disaster and nothing much we can do about it,” finance committee member Hugh Morton said.

Teacher and busing contracts

Stanton-Cross said upcoming talks with the teachers’ union will likely be difficult. Even if the same deal currently on the books is continued in the new contract, “I think I have a value of $725,000 as the cost of those (compensation) increases over three years.”

“It’s going to be a very difficult negotiation,” she said.

Concurrently, school committee member Michelle Rapoza said, the district is going out to bid for a new transportation contract that would be in place for the start of the 2024-25 school year.

“We’re looking at about a $165,000 increase over the $1 million we’re at now (and) that has nothing to do with spending increases.”

New school maxed out?

Getting back to the earlier point made by Aubin about the district’s growth, Stanton Cross agreed that it’s great news, as more students means more funding. Still, it presents an infrastructural problem:

“In the 5-12 building (middle high school) I believe we are two seats from maximum capacity,” she said. “If our growth continues ... I can’t see how we can sustain the population over at the 5-12. It might end up being (grades) six to 12, and we’ll have to push classes (to other schools) because there’s no other place to push them.”

The free cash problem

The schools were supplemented this year with $500,000 from the towns’ free cash account. Raus said that is not sustainable over the long term.

“I’m worried” about it, she said. “It will catch up with us. I’ve always been reluctant to use free cash but have been amenable to it to bridge the gap to avoid temporarily having to lay people off with the hopes that an override would come and kind of get us there. Well, the override didn’t come so now using free cash in the budget, in my opinion, is much more problematic because that’s not sustainable. We have to find a way to true it up. We’re already walking into fiscal 25 with a $500,000 deficit. We need to figure out a way to balance this budget” without relying so heavily on free cash.

Town contract talks —
can revenue sustain growth?

The school department isn’t the only town entity renegotiating contracts.

Town administrator James Hartnett said Westport is looking at negotiations with the fire and police department, as well as the highway department.

Hartnett said he looked at town revenue going back six or seven years, and noted that while it’s increased about $900,000 during that time, it’s not enough to cover contractual increases.

“I don’t see how we do it without some cuts,” he said. “You either have an override or you have cuts, and that’s it.”

Transparency and the override vote

Stanton Cross said the town needs to “take a look” at the override, and the questions residents had about town spending leading up to it. Prior to the vote, much was made about the lack of availability of a comprehensive town financial report on the town’s website, which brought up lots of questions “that people felt were unanswered.”

As a result, she said, there was widespread misinformation being spread through social media that did not help the town sell the need for an override.

Hartnett said that while the full report may not have been available in one place, the information was all available.

“This transparency issue has come up quite a bit over the last few months,” he said. “We are extremely transparent here. If somebody wants information they can get the information. If they don’t see it on the website, call my office, call the superintendent’s office. We’ll make sure they get that information.”

Though he said he would love to update the town’s website to make it more functional, “we are looking at $40,000, $45,000 to do that, so it gets pushed aside.”

“Critical mass”

On the transparency side, Aubin said, “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I have to tell it straight: We are at critical mass now. There’s nothing to cut anymore. When I say there’s nothing to cut anymore, I challenge anybody: Bring in any auditor you want, bring in any expert you want, see what you can cut.

Privatization of services? Bare minimums?

Though she prefaced her remarks by saying she is not in favor of it, select board member Shauna Shufelt said the town should at least look at the financial impact of privatizing some services and reducing funding in some areas to the minimum required statutorily.

“Many towns privatize their ambulance services. I’m not in favor of that but ... we’re hiring paramedics on our fire crew. We don’t have to. We could get a private company to do our EMT services. We should at least look at that.”

“Again, I am not advocating for that — I think we run a pretty tight ship. But that’s one of the areas. I think the other avenue we need to take is any area that is not required by law we need to look at.”

“You do not have to fund a library at the levels we are funding them at. You do not have to fund all of the recreation department. I advocated for this override, I don’t want to cut these departments, but I want to know which ones we do not have to fund. We really need to take a hard look at what we are required to do.”

Finance committee member Christopher Thrasher agreed.

“Unfortunately we are in a situation where we have to start from what we are legally required to provide as a town. The drop in the bucket thing ... adds up over time. It’s not a comfortable thing to discuss.”

Working together

Later in the meeting, Karen Raus asked how the town should address school costs — “What do we do?”

“You’re going to do what you do every year, which is tell us this is the number and make your cuts,” Stanton Cross said. “And then we’re going to have a disagreement about what that is and what the repercussions are. I do feel like it’s all been ‘school, school, school’ tonight.”

“It has not been school, school, school,” Raus replied. “We need to come up with a collective solution. What I’m trying to avoid is that we’re sitting here in March having a complete disagreement where the school has its number that it needs, there’s no way that the town can afford to do it, and we’re up against the wall. We need to avoid that.”