Last week, I updated that the Budget Summit planned for this past Saturday was being postponed. The meeting has been rescheduled to February 8th.
I’m sharing those details along with an update on the financial situation that prompted the change — uncertainty around school bus budgets.
The Summit – Who, What, Where, When & Why
The summit is held jointly by the Select Board, Advisory Committee with have overlapping but independent roles in recommending what budgets Town Meeting voters should approve. They will hold it with the depts/committees that represent the biggest expenses in the budgets. Those are the public schools, Fire Dept, Police Dept, and the DPW. They’ll also have a general discussion on the overall FY26 budget.
The meeting is now scheduled for a week from Saturday, on February 8th at 8:30 am in the Public Safety Building’s training room.
The meeting is an open one the public can attend. But there won’t be remote participation (and nothing indicates it will be recorded for later viewing.) You can find the detailed agenda here.
The original summit date was postponed after the Combined School Committees voted to go back out to bid on next year’s Transportation contract. It doesn’t appear that a new contract will be settled by the time the summit takes place. However, the NSBORO administration may believe that they will have a clearer understanding by then of what increase they can reasonably forecast.
In December, Treasurer Brian Ballantine shared a scary, but unrealistic, figure on the initial overall FY26 tax burden projections. (The figure is always much higher at this point in the process than what is actually brought to Town Meeting.)
The preliminary figures showed an 11.81% tax increase for the average homeowner. (That’s an additional $1,596.20 increase to taxes on a home valued at $997,458.54). To avoid the mistake made last year, that was calculated to cover a 4% “value shift” — the estimated difference between increased residential property valuations versus Commercial & Industrial properties.
Ballantine and other officials stressed that a tax hike that large won’t be presented to voters. The figures were based on if they greenlit almost every new budget request made by department heads and committees, plus approved every financial article.
Between the December 17th presentation and the Budget Summit, the administrative & finance team planned to work with departments to bring the financial requests down.
Whatever versions are presented on February 8th, you can expect that members of the Select Board and Advisory will use the summit to explore what further cuts they want to recommend (or expenses they think are worth adding).
School Budgets
Like the Town budget, the public schools always start off with a much bigger proposed budget than the version they take to voters. But, the NSBORO administration is already part way through that process, having honed down their initial version.
The final budgets approved by voters last year were identical to the “Superintendent’s Revised Preliminary Budget” presented in January. That seems to mean we should take seriously the revised budgets presented at school committee meetings this month.
In the Superintendent’s January 21st newsletter, he identified the “Key Budget Drivers” behind the increase as:
- School Bus Transportation – Rising operational and fuel costs – Negotiating new contracts
- Reduction of Grant Funding – Decreased external funding sources
- Student Services – Increased demand for student support programs
- Curriculum Resources – Enhancements to educational materials and technology
At the time of that message, the budget for Algonquin Regional High School was still in its initial preliminary budget stage and shown as an 11.91%. increase. The revised figure presented last week was much better, but still high.
The Regional budget now proposes a 5.42% increase of $1,510,730, bringing the total to $29,382,156. That amount is split between Southborough and Northborough. The percent for each town is determined by the state. At this stage, I’m not clear on what Southborough’s share of that would be.
Southborough K-8 Schools propose a 3.91% increase to the budget. That’s an additional $947,543, for a total of $25,206,507.
School Transportation/Bus Issues & Planning
At the January 22nd Regional School Committee meeting, Superintendent Gregory Martineau updated members on their plans to go back out to bid soon. As discussed at the Combined School Committees meeting, the proposed contract will revise the requirements that were the biggest reasons bids came back 50-90% higher than the current contract.
The two “drivers” of cost increases were requirements for dedicated substitute drivers and caps on age/mileage on buses.
Member John Wysocki asked how they could be sure they fully understand any “quality degradations” a new contract would represent before it goes out to bid. Martineau assured that the contract will still have stipulations demanding quality that he believes will be improvements even “without these two modifications”.
As for the two big revisions, they are working with a consultant on what the changes should be. In addition to avoiding spiking the costs, they want to ensure any increase in cost reflects an actual increase in quality.
Under the current contract, NRT (the bus company) is required to have substitute drivers on staff. But, those are shared among multiple districts. In the last bid attempt, NSBORO asked for 4 substitute drivers to be dedicated to the Northborough, Southborough, and Regional district.
Martineau confirmed that those drivers get paid whether or not they are used. He noted that the current average is 2-3 absent drivers per day. (On a given day, it ranges from zero to about five.) The current contract does require that NRT provides 32 drivers. But due to driver shortages, sometimes the number of subs NRT has for all of its customers isn’t enough to cove absences. At times, our district has had to “double up” on buses. That costs NRT in penalties charged. But Martineau said the reality is there isn’t enough drivers and accountability to avoid the problem. He believes having additional dedicated drivers would help
The Superintendent said they now think that two dedicated subs is the right number to “land on”.
Asst Director of Operations, Rebecca Pellegrino, followed that they may separate out the substitutes into an add alternative to the contract. That calls for the bidder to bid on the main contract, plus stipulate an extra cost if the alternative clause is added to it. That way they would have the data on what each dedicated sub would cost and the option of whether or not to pay for that.
Under the last bid, NSBORO had also required that the buses would not be older than five years or have more than 60,000 in mileage at the start of each contract year. They are still working with their consultant to decide what the right caps to request is to balance quality improvements and cost impacts.
As of last week’s meeting, the administration hoped to go back out to bid within a week or two.
Earlier in the meeting, Martineau discussed the “Legislative Priorities” he wants the committee to pursue. Among them was pushing for changes related to buses.
On the positive side, he shared that the Governor’s recommended budget calls for a 95% reimbursement rate for regional districts’ bus transportation. (That only applies to the Algonquin buses, not the Northborough and Southborough K-8 schools.) That’s short of the 100% originally promised by the state when the towns formed the district, and which the Regional School Committee has continued to advocate for since that figure declined many years ago. But it is a higher rate than has usually been proposed in initial budgets. (The final figure still depends on what the legislature passes.)
Although he didn’t talk about it in the meeting, the priorities in the packet detailed the need to push legislators to make changes that would improve public schools’ ability to negotiate reasonable bus contracts.
It purports ways that school administrations’ hands are tied and how to untie them:
School Transportation
For The Public Schools of Northborough and Southborough school transportation is a legislative priority. Securing reliable and cost-effective transportation services has become increasingly challenging. Key issues include:
- The declining competition for bus contracts limits options and drives up costs.
- The restrictions of M.G.L. c. 71, § 7C prevent collaboration between school districts and Regional Transportation Authorities to explore efficient transportation alternatives.
- The mandate under M.G.L. c. 30B § 5 to accept the lowest bid, even when factors like reliability, safety, and past performance suggest a higher bid would be more beneficial.
We are asking the Legislature to:
- Create a working group on strategies to enhance competition and improve the performance of transportation companies.
- Repeal M.G.L. c. 71, § 7C, allowing school districts to collaborate with Regional Transportation Authorities for innovative and cost-effective transportation solutions.
- Add an amendment to ensure school districts are not required to select the lowest bidder, enabling a more holistic evaluation of potential vendors.
These proposed changes would directly address the challenges The Public Schools of Northborough and Southborough face by fostering competition, enhancing service quality, and reducing financial strain. More importantly, they prioritize the safety, reliability, and efficiency of transportation services that our students depend on daily. By prioritizing this as a legislative priority, you can ensure that all students have access to safe, dependable, and cost-effective transportation, which is vital for their educational success and well-being.
