Barre Town Meeting Overrides Finance Panel, Boosts School Budget by $109,000

BARRE -- June 14, 2022, Barre Town Meeting voted 82-56 to fund the Quabbin Regional School District at $6,199,860.81, roughly $109,000 above the Finance Committee's recommendation, then immediately cut five other budget lines to compensate. Finance Committee Chair Dan Jewell said the panel's figure already represented the largest dollar increase to the schools in at least 10 years, a 5.5 percent year-over-year jump, while the district's requested 7.39 percent assessment increase reflected two years of pandemic-era savings that had temporarily held assessments flat. Select Board member Greg O'Sullivan warned that funding the higher number "represents basically 100 percent of our revenue increase for the whole entire town" and would likely force a levy increase in FY2024. The meeting also authorized borrowing $305,000 for a new ambulance and $700,000 for a 32-year-old South Barre fire engine the department said can no longer be reliably repaired, over Finance Committee objection that multiple concurrent apparatus loans posed fiscal risk to a town whose stabilization account stands at roughly $800,000.