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Youth Center, Mount Greylock Budgets Sail Through Williamstown FinComm
By Rebecca Dravis, iBerkshires Staff
01:40PM / Tuesday, April 04, 2017
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Members of the Williamstown Finance Committee listen the Mt. Greylock Regional School District budget presentation.

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Two more chunks of the Williamstown budget have sailed through presentations in front of the Finance Committee.

At its March 29 meeting, the committee heard from the Williamstown Youth Center, seeking a $73,381 allocation from the town, and the Mount Greylock Regional School District, seeking an allocation of $6,394,541.

David Rempell, executive director of the youth center, first gave a brief presentation to the committee about the mission of the center, which provides before- and after-school care as well as vacation and summer camps. Rempell told the committee that the number of children enrolled in the after-school program has jumped 10 percent from last year to this year, mostly among the first- and second-graders.

"So many kids are impacted by a child-centered environment," he said.

Rempell said the center still only has two full-time staffers, who are supplemented by a group of part-time employees, volunteers and college students. This, along with allocations from the town, the Williamstown Community Chest, other donations and fundraising, and rental income from organizations like Berkshire Dance Theatre, has allowed the center to keep its costs down and thus make themselves available to as many families as possible.

"We charge a low fee because of the support of the town and the support of the Community Chest," Rempell said, adding that the center's mortgage is down to $70,000 and that is also putting money away for future expenses like the $850 annual maintenance fee for the facility's new solar installation on the roof and other maintenance needs.

Looking forward, Rempell talked about how the center is installing new software that will allow parents to register for and pay for programs in the same system. He hopes to look at the status of youth sports in the area to make sure to "get the message out" about the true objective of youth sports. And he said the center is building on existing collaborations with other area institutions to offer more options for children, giving the example of Ramblewild, the aerial adventure park in Lanesborough, which has allowed one group of kids to come through and will allow more in the future.

"It's no longer a one-size-fits-all program," he said.

The Finance Committee thanked Rempell for his presentation and did not have any questions for him, nor did members have many questions about the other presentation of the evening: the Mount Greylock Regional School District.

Interim Superintendent Kim Grady was joined by Mount Greylock Principal Mary MacDonald, who first sang the praises of the school, which has retained its Level 1 status and continues to offer a "broad, diverse program of study to meet a wide variety of needs and interests."

The district has presented a flat operating budget, with the proposed total 5.57 percent increase solely resulting from the building project. Williamstown will see 6.89 increase and Lanesborough will see a 3.01 increase.

Even with the flat operating budget, Grady was happy to report that there were many positives in the budget.

"We're essentially looking to return some of the positives we've had to forego in the last few years," she said.

Those positives include efforts to keep class sizes lower, replacing both a math teacher and a wellness teacher to lead a new health curriculum, redesigning some elective courses to add options like a class on forensics, adding a "virtual class" option for some classes, purchasing some new textbooks, allowing the expansion of sports contests and making a co-op available for hockey and swimming, and maintaining the 5:15 p.m. after-school bus.

Most of the conversation between Grady and the Finance Committee revolved around her new presentation of the budget, which she reformatted to look more like the Williamstown Elementary School budget that the committee had indicated it liked. The biggest change was allowing the expenses and revenue columns to line up with each other so it is easier to see how items balance each other, such as school choice tuition coming in and going out.

Both Grady and MacDonald said the committee will see some positive budget changes  in the future with the opening of the new building, which will have new, lower operational costs because of energy-efficient features. They also said they are seeing a lot of baby boomer teachers retiring, which means they can hire newer, younger teachers on a lower pay scale.

Overall, this year's budget is fairly uneventful and noncontroversial, Grady said.

"There's nothing I feel I need to point out that's glaring," she said, adding that the district is "blessed" to have financial support from the Williams College Fund.

The entire $13.5 million budget is posted online. The Finance Committee will meet Wednesday to vote on its recommendations for all the budgets presented to it in advance of the annual town meeting on May 16.

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