Lanesborough, for Now, Avoids Special Town Meeting on School Boiler Project
LANESBOROUGH, Mass. — Town officials and the Mount Greylock Regional School District agreed Monday that the district will bear the upfront cost of replacing a failing boiler at the elementary school and be reimbursed by the town at a later date.
The town's Board of Selectmen and Finance Committee held a joint meeting with a single-item agenda: to review warrant articles for a special town meeting.
Such a meeting would be necessary to fund the boiler replacement out of town coffers.
But it was clear at the outset that the parties had agreed to avoid the step of calling a special town meeting to appropriate funds either from free cash or the town's stabilization fund.
"Basically, we've asked the school to front the money," Chair John Goerlach said moments after the meeting began. "We will save the cost of a special town meeting unless we need one at a further date. And we'll reimburse the school at a later date."
Town Administrator Joshua Lang said Goerlach had suggested that strategy and Lang brought it to the superintendent.
"He said that would work, but they would want something in writing from the town," Lang said. "I did talk to town counsel a little bit in regard to this, and we can't necessarily have a 'yes or no' type of phrasing. It would be up to the townspeople at a special town meeting.
"There is a chance that folks could say, 'No, we're not going to do this.' But you have to explain to them that in the lease agreement, we're required to cover these kind of expenses."
The town, which built the school two decades ago, before the Mount Greylock district fully regionalized, still owns the Lanesborough Elementary School (as does Williamstown in the case of WES), and the municipality is responsible for extraordinary maintenance, like boilers and the roof.
Mount Greylock Superintendent Jason McCandless brought the boiler issue to the attention of the School Committee earlier this summer. At the time, he said he was talking to the town about using funds from the town's proceeds from the American Rescue Plan Act to fund the $50,000 project.
The town's ARPA Committee then balked at that idea, which raised the possibility of a special town meeting to generate the funds.
At Monday's joint meeting, Finance Committee Chair Jodi-Lee Szczepaniak-Locke asked why the ARPA funds were off the table.
"I'm still concerned why the ARPA money was quickly shut off when it would be an excellent investment," Szczepaniak-Locke said. "We've spent a lot of ARPA money on vehicles and things. … This is a building that could be used in an emergency for housing.
"It's an investment in the future and our safety."
No one at Monday's meeting addressed Szczepaniak-Locke's question head on.
There was a discussion about the other capital needs at the 20-year-old elementary school.
Finance Committee member Ron Tinkham said the town should look at all the long-term expenses for the school building and consider seeking grants or, perhaps, bonding out large capital items, especially with the building bond for the structure itself coming off the town's books.
"I have no problem with getting the job done," Tinkham said. "I have no problem with authorizing the money to ensure we have a good system. But we have to look at the overall bigger picture."
Finance Committee member Robert Reilly asked how the town was monitoring systems on its properties, including the school.
Mount Greylock Operations Director Rob Wnuk said a leak in the boiler was reported by the school's custodian on March 30 and an HVAC contractor was brought in immediately to check it. Both the school's boilers are given annual cleanings and maintenance checks, Wnuk said.
Lang told Reilly that the town is in the process of doing an asset inventory to look at all of its properties and the school could be added to that process in addition to the monitoring already done by the district.
In the end, both the Select Board and Finance Committee voted to approve a motion for "the school to use their funds until ours are available to reimburse."
No other potential special town meeting warrant articles were discussed at the meeting.
Tags: LES, MGRSD,
