When we’ve discovered there’s information we’ve needed, we’ve gotten it, and I think cooperation has been good.”
“But I don’t want it to be cast that we are solving a serious problem,” he added. He expressed concern about “ratifying it in the bylaw right now when there isn’t a problem,” but also said “it is easier than doing it in the middle of a problem.” “I am skeptical that we need a bylaw to do this,” said committee member Michael Wise, though he voted in favor of the proposed change, and has taken his own interest in the district’s finances. The new bylaw asks for more from the town and extends the role to the school district: “Regular and special reports and statements concerning the Town’s financial situation and operations, including its enterprise and other funds, and similar reports for the regional school district shall be transmitted to the Finance Committee…” The original bylaw in the town charter, and adopted in 1974, assigns a budget advisory role to the committee. Gregory said she has found a number of reports “online and in different places,” but said she “would like it to be part of the habit that we receive these reports.” Gregory, for instance, complained that while she did receive a recent audit report from the district, she got it the same day as the audit meeting. Bannon added that he welcomes a large showing at the district’s budget meetings.īut Gregory, and now the committee as a whole, say that it isn’t enough. All the state-required financial reporting, Dillon and Bannon said, is available from the district office, the state Department of Education’s website, and the budget is posted on the district’s website. The issue hit a rolling boil last month when Gregory, after making numerous requests for more complex reports, was finally told by Superintendent Peter Dillon and School Committee Chair Stephen Bannon that constructing some of those reports was so time-consuming that it dragged Dillon and business manager Sharon Harrison away from the job of running the district.
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I don’t think our websites are being utilized to the full capacity and maybe sometimes that’s intentional.” The issue was lit to a simmer during the Monument Mountain Regional High School renovation controversy, which threw the district’s finances and related policies under a magnifying glass and created pockets of fomenting distrust in the district amid cries of “transparency.”įor example, Housatonic resident Michelle Loubert Tuesday night remarked that if the finance committee was having so much trouble gathering district financial information, “imagine what it’s like for the average citizen whose paying the money for all of this. Gregory said the town “has been very forthcoming” with their reports, but still, she would like to see more tailored reports generated “as a matter of course.” Finance Committee member Michael Wise who remains “skeptical” of the need for a revision to Town Charter bylaws.
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