Voters in the town of Hatfield are being asked to support a Proposition 2½ budget override at the Town Meeting on May 9 and town election on Tuesday, May 16. A majority vote is required at both to pass the override.

The 1980 state law automatically raises something called the levy limit by 2.5% each year. To simplify, that generally translates into allowing the town’s spending to increase by 2.5% without needing approval from Town Meeting or in the voting booth. This, of course, also results in a real estate tax bill increase, which, depending on other factors, could exceed 2.5%. To go beyond the 2.5% requires the voters to support the override.

It is not a debt-exclusion override (for borrowing used for buying trucks or building schools, for example) that would go away when the debt is paid; it is a permanent increase to the level of our spending and establishes this higher level as a basis for future year increases.

Over 65% of the town’s budget is to support the school district. Further, the school budget is understated because it does not include retirement and health insurance benefits. Those costs are a burden on the general town budget and likely bring the school portion of our spending to 70% or more.

The proponents of the Prop. 2½ override are members of the School Committee and parents who, at any cost, want to preserve our so-called private school. Despite the declining enrollment, the decline of students coming here via school choice, and the decline of academic excellence and college preparedness in the district, they want to throw more money into the problem, hoping that more students will arrive via school choice. They believe Hatfield will become a destination school in the Valley.

This is an unrealistic and unproven theory that will harm both taxpayers and, more importantly, our children. A district our size is not increasing their incoming choice students and can never adequately support the facilities and staff necessary for programs to be competitive with the other great public districts and private schools in the area.

In spite of an excellent presentation pitching the override, largely prepared by the chairwoman of the School Committee, the elephant in the room is being unacknowledged. For over the past 25 years and through five school superintendents, the issue of forming a partnership with a neighboring district has been raised as the only solution to the future of Hatfield schools.

In virtually every instance of these pleadings, the School Committee has been silent. The School Committee’s goal of keeping our private district (the smallest in the commonwealth) seems to squash any forward-looking, beneficial analysis of an alternative solution.

I write to strongly support voting “no” to the Proposition 2½ override both at Town Meeting and in the voting booth. This will send a strong message to the School Committee and superintendent to bring forth a proposal to send our high school students to Frontier in Deerfield. We would then offer our children excellent academic and athletic opportunities, along with an environment with more students, more diversity, and a healthier environment for learning.

For those of us concerned with other town services such as the Council on Aging, public safety and Department of Public Works that might need the benefit of a Prop. 2½ override, the selectmen could present specific overrides, if necessary, for non-school items at a special Town Meeting within the next couple of months. For the sake of these vital services, it was a disservice for the Select Board to combine everything into a single override vote instead of a menu of options.

E Lary Grossman lives in Hatfield.

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