By David Porter 

A report on the regular meeting of the Amherst Town Council on Monday, February 2.

The Town Council got a dose of tough love sprinkled with some guarded optimism at its meeting on Monday that featured a presentation and Q&A session with state Rep. Mindy Domb and state Sen. Jo Comerford.

While they refrained from sugarcoating the fiscal challenges facing the town – and western Massachusetts as a whole – the two legislators suggested that building coalitions with similarly situated communities around the state can build a stronger case, and cited as an example the Jones Library project, which received additional state money after Amherst officials spearheaded an effort that involved 11 other towns with library projects.

An area where this approach could be applied is PILOT (Payments In Lieu of Taxes), an ongoing concern not just in Amherst but in 28 other communities around the state that host educational institutions that use town resources and infrastructure but don’t contribute property tax revenue. Council member Lynn Griesemer noted that more than 25 percent of Amherst’s land is owned by higher educational institutions and the town “has no leverage.” 

Comerford, who sits on a commission examining the issue, said the current PILOT formula is “wildly inequitable” for western Massachusetts communities because it compares land values in towns as disparate as Amherst and Nantucket, and also penalizes Amherst for not having land value growing at the same rate as the state average. 

Reaching out to the other communities will help, Domb said, adding, “This has to be a statewide coalition, because the first thing that we’re going to hear from our colleagues is that people move there because it is a college town, right? As almost dismissing an opportunity to help. So we need to sort of reach out to the network of other host communities that may also be feeling that crunch to be able to work with us.”

Council member Jennifer Taub said that Connecticut has a PILOT program that reimburses towns for a percentage of tax revenue not being paid by educational or nonprofit institutions. 

In a similar vein, Domb said Chapter 70, the state school funding formula, is in dire need of fixing and that in the next year, the final year of increased funding under the Student Opportunity Act, it will be vital to strategize with other communities that are in a similar situation. In the meantime, some progress can still be made.

“Each piece right now has to be dealt with as its own piece, because of the reluctance to deal with the whole piece,” she said. “But we have not lost our vision on that. It’s a systemic problem that needs a systemic solution, even if in the next year we have to continue to chisel away at the pieces of it.”

Monday’s public comment period underscored the level of anxiety over the looming school budget, as most of the commenters expressed frustration and concern at the prospect of positions and programs being cut, with one characterizing the schools as being in a “death spiral” if solutions aren’t found, including using some of the town’s surplus to forestall cuts.

FY27 Budget

In a bit of welcome news, Bockelman reported that health care costs for the town will increase a little over eight percent in FY27, nearly 10 percent lower than what the town has been budgeting for.  

“We haven’t really calculated that impact, but once we are able to do that, that will release a lot of money for us to do the core services that we’re really trying to fund,” he said.

Other Business

The Council also discussed scheduling a special meeting to consider the Regional School Committee request to fund the expansion of the middle school roof replacement project to include the auditorium roof, which is roughly 25 years old and actively leaking. 

The Council also agreed to formally request information from Town Manager Paul Bockelman on the first six months of a residential rental inspection program begun last fall. 

---

The Town Council meets next on February 9 for a work session on the Charter Review Committee recommendations. The meeting is at 6:30 pm in Town Hall. Read the agenda.

The next regular Town Council meeting will be on February 23 in Town Hall at 6:30 pm.

Both Town Council meetings are also accessible via Zoom, livestream, and Amherst Media broadcast. Meeting details, agendas, and access are posted on the Town Council webpage.

Subscribe below to get the Current’s coverage in your inbox.