$39.7 million Harwood Union school budget passes on second vote
June 17, 2020 | By Lisa Scagliotti
UPDATE: This story was updated to add a statement from the Harwood Union School Board.
In a second vote in three months, voters in the Harwood Unified Union School District’s six communities have accepted a $39.7 million budget for 2020-21.
The proposed budget won by a comfortable margin, 1,213 to 728, according to election returns released by the district Tuesday night.
Because ballots from all polling places are combined, there are no vote tallies by town.
Based on details from individual town clerks, however, the 1,941 people who voted represent approximately 17.8% of the registered voters in the district.
The turnout was just 23 votes shy of the participation on June 7, 2016 when the six communities decided to combine into one merged school district. That move as prescribed by the statewide Act 46 law won support 1,553 to 411 at the ballot box for a total of 1,964 voters.
Ahead of the vote, school officials were concerned that turnout would be low both because of the off-cycle timing and due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. That’s why they urged voters to request early ballots from their town clerks by mail in order to vote early and avoid any in-person contact at the polls.
The suggestion worked. All of the town clerks reported sending out a significant number of early/absentee ballots. On Tuesday, turnout in person was light with election workers armed with hand sanitizer and spray cleaners to sanitize pens and tables after each use. Given the pace, however, there was plenty of time to keep up.
At Waterbury’s municipal building late Tuesday afternoon, Town Clerk Carla Lawrence and three election workers all wore face coverings as they sat waiting for voters to stop by. “It’s been pretty slow,” Lawrence said.
In Duxbury, Town Clerk Maureen Harvey oversaw a curbside voting operation for the first time with election workers in the shade under pop-up tents along the school bus loop at Crossett Brook Middle School.
The drive-up setup was working well Tuesday afternoon as voters pulled up to check in, get a ballot, mark it and turn it in without leaving their cars. Volunteers held a small ballot box up alongside each car so the driver could drop their ballot in; in their other hand they had a small container to collect used pens that were sanitized after each use.
There, too, the pace was never too busy to keep up and Harvey said she still had voters returning early ballots at the town office drop-box.
Here’s a breakdown of how many voters participated in Tuesday’s vote by town:
Duxbury: Had a total of 225 votes which were split between in-person voters on Tuesday and those who mailed in or dropped off ballots beforehand. Town Clerk Maureen Harvey said her office sent out 129 absentee/early ballots and 111 of them were returned.
Fayston: Town Clerk Patti Lewis said there was a total of 275 votes. She sent out 224 early ballots and 188 were returned. The rest of the ballots were voted in person on Tuesday.
Moretown: The majority of ballots were voted ahead of Tuesday, according to Town Clerk Cherilyn Brown. Absentee/early ballots numbered 195 with an additional 81 voters using Tuesday’s drive-through for a total of 276.
Waitsfield: A total of 289 voters cast ballots, according to Town Clerk Jen Peterson. At least 157 were early ballots that had been returned. Some additional early ballots were likely turned in on Tuesday, although Peterson said she did not have checklist records handy on Wednesday to confirm.
Warren: Town Clerk Reta Goss said a total of 254 voters cast ballots. On Tuesday, 90 voted in person and the rest voted early by mail.
Waterbury: The vast majority - 463 - of Waterbury’s voters used absentee ballots by mail. On Tuesday, another 161 voted at the municipal complex for a total of 624, Town Clerk Carla Lawrence said.
The budget that passed on Tuesday is just $20,000 less than the version voters rejected on Town Meeting Day, voting then 3,048 to 2,254 against the plan. But at $39,751,941, it represents more of a status quo approach for the next school year than school officials originally envisioned.
The March budget called for merging the district’s two middle schools at the Crossett Brook campus. It also would have added fifth and sixth graders from Moretown Elementary School to Crossett. To do that, temporary buildings would have been needed until voters would have been able to consider and vote on funding a project to permanently expand the Crossett Brook building.
Whether, how and when to combine the middle grades will be back up for discussion this fall when the school board begins looking ahead to the budget it will suggest for fiscal year 2021-22. That question is part of what it calls its “preK-to-12 plan” to evaluate all of the district’s school facilities and how they are used.
The newly passed budget had a similar bottom line to the March budget as a result of a number of spending cuts school officials made such as eliminating planned increases in staffing, cutting back on professional development and savings from a transportation contract that will cost less than anticipated.
School officials have noted that the portion of spending that relies on property taxes in this budget is about $112,000 less than the 2019-20 budget due to revenue from a previous surplus that will be allocated to the district’s maintenance fund. Overall, the budget reflects an increase of about 3% which is less than the 5% statewide average.
Per-pupil spending in the new budget is $18,397, up 2.47% from the current school year’s budget.
The vote came just two weeks before the current fiscal year’s budget ends. The new budget goes into effect July 1.
The Harwood Union School Board issued a statement Wednesday thanking the voters for supporting the budget. "Finalizing it before the start of next fiscal year offers our district’s families, staff, and taxpayers greater confidence and stability as we continue to navigate the effects of COVID on our schools and in our world," the board statement said.
The board also thanked voters for requesting absentee ballots and praised town clerks and election officials who navigated holding the election amidst a public health crisis saying they "rose to the challenge with aplomb."