Mic's good? Ready to go? You are up. Welcome to the, what's today? April 13th meeting of the Westfield Special School Committee Meeting. Take attendance. Jeffrey Guthler. Here. Kathleen Hillman. Here. Bo Sullivan, here. Jeff Goslin. Here. Mike Torrell. Here. Kick Sullivan. Here. Chairman McCabe. Here. Where's the flag? Right here. There we go. All rise for the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Well, as I said, welcome. Tonight's meeting is all about the budget.
But before we get into the budget review, I'd like to open up the microphones to folks who would like to add their two cents or ask any questions they have of the school committee. Again, this won't be a give and take back and forth, but if you have an opinion that you'd like to share, you're more than welcome to. We'll leave public participation open for about 30 minutes, and if you have something you'd like to address us with, you have up to three minutes to do so. So anybody who would like to address the school committee, feel free. Wow. Okay. I'm going to close public participation and move on to the review of the
2026/2027 budget proposal for the Westfield Public Schools, covering July 1st, 2026 to June 2027. Ms. Barry? Good evening, everyone. I am going to just review a few of the slides from our presentation- Closer to you ... from our presentation last Monday. So our total proposed budget is $78,883,443. That's a 4.39% increase from the FY26 budget. So again, when we look at the spread between personnel and expenses, personnel is 70.8% of the budget and expenses
29.2. And as I mentioned last Monday, we've seen a real shift in the amount of the budget that is personnel versus expenses. Personnel has gone down significantly over the years. And then if we look at the budget comparing year over year, you can see that when we compare FY26 to FY27, the personnel budget is increasing almost $3 million. The expense budget, $354,949 for an overall budget increase of $3.3 million. Just under a million of that is coming from Chapter 70, and the rest would be from the city's contribution.
And just to review some of the other offsets that we have supporting the budget, one of the large ones is school choice. To recap, we receive $5,000 for every school choice student that we receive in-district. And then special education students, we receive an incremental amount above the $5,000. So we are using that in the proposed budget to offset technology, curriculum materials, and contracted services and salaries, for amount of $1,610,000. Circuit breaker, again, FY26 reimbursements we are using in FY27. The FY26 reimbursements are based on our
FY25 claim. Those will be used to support out-of-district tuitions. We're using $3,294,941. Our Special Education 240 grant covers a bunch of different things, but specifically for tuitions, we are using $600,000. Grants, again, the 240, Title I, CPPI, and Title III are covering salaries at just about $3 million. And finally, from this year's FY26 budget, we'll be prepaying out-of-district tuitions at $700,000. And that's all I had for a review from Monday. And I just want to-- Sorry, Mike.
Yeah, go ahead. I just want to add, on your tables are class sizes for elementary and middle intermediate. And our goal is to K to two. My goal has been since I've gotten here to keep our K to two classes around 20, and our grades three to 12 classes at a max or around 25 average. Any further members of the committee? Hmm? Mike Torrell. Oh. Sorry. Mr. Torrell. Okay. So the sheet that we have in front of us here represents, and I'm looking at the lower portion of it, which is grade five, six, seven, and eight.
So to be clear, scenario one is the $78,883,443 budget that you've proposed, and the class sizes are generally about 20 at that grade level. And in scenario two, which waspresented at the last meeting- Mm-hmm ... the class sizes basically jumped to about 25. Right. That's a correct statement. Can you walk me through, really quick, the highlighted reduction portion on the top on the elementary portion of this?
Sure. So those are positions that have already been included in the budget reduction in the tier one in the first phase. Okay. So those positions are already there, and then we put the average of those classes by site, by grade at those schools. Got it. Okay. So some of those are starting to creep up as well- Correct ... even in scenario one- Right ... is what we're saying, at the elementary level. Okay. I have one other question at the moment anyway. And it was corresponding to the bus fee slide- Mm-hmm ... that was in the
slideshow from the beginning. And let me just be clear, I am in no way advocating for a bus fee at this point. But in thinking it through, one of the problems we had when we went to full free lunches was not getting our vouchers back for the low-income rate, which I'm looking at on this slide, says it's 46.9%. Mm-hmm. So two thoughts in terms of the buses. Particularly at the high school level, but also at the lower grade levels, there's a significant amount of
folks that choose to bring their children to school as opposed to have them on a bus. So I'm assuming we have to account for buses for everybody who is eligible to take a bus regardless of whether or not their parents bring them to school every day. We actually got ridership numbers. Yeah. There we go. Mm-hmm. So we actually got ridership numbers, so we did not anticipate the seats that are vacant. You do? Okay. These are people who are actually riding. We're informing next year's bus contract based on the actual ridership that we have as opposed to the kids that are eligible to ride.
Correct. Okay. Well, so the contract is based on the number of buses that we have. Right. So we're in the last year of our three-year contract next school year, correct? Right. Okay. Since we can't any longer do it with free and reduced lunches, is there a way that we could work on that, getting those vouchers back, getting the data back to be able to validate that low-income rate number? So we actually have- Because it's tied to funding from the state at the end of the day.
That's where I'm kind of going with all of it. So what we- Not that I want to charge for a bus ride, but if we could somehow get that number up, maybe that squeezes a few more dollars out of the state level. So we do reach out to folks and encourage them, and we've done that actually in the last two years since this came up previously. What's happened is the number has declined in the city. Yeah. And to get to the 50 number that we would need to get to is not possible based on the residents that are here now. And the state comes up with their numbers, so what we try to do is to, with our efforts, try to recapture additional numbers.
But when we go through that, we're talking less than 20 particular families would additionally qualify, and it still wouldn't bring us up to the necessary percentage. Okay. And I'm guessing with 20 because I think we've actually only gotten a handful that that number has increased. So because it's fallen at this point 46.9, so that's well below 50, it wouldn't necessarily make a difference in the funding formula unless it was over that number. How many students make up 3%, off the top of your head? 100, couple hundred? Yeah. About 100, right? Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Dr. Gunther.
I noticed in the presentation that you all did last week, one of the drivers that you named was the increase in SPED cost of about $1.9 million this year. I'm just curious how much of that is coming along and how much of that being funded through increase in circuit breaker, increase in SPED 240, with the assumption that the rest of it essentially needs to be funded by local support? So our circuit breaker increase from FY25 to FY26 was just $66,261.
So a very small increase compared to the number of students that we're sending out of district. So we do not have any anticipation about what our FY27 240 grant numbers look like. There's been no communication from the state yet if we can expect an increase or a decrease. But looking at what happened from FY25 to FY26, we saw a slight decrease. It was $24,336 that we actually lost on the 240 grant. And we also anticipate losing 10%, we were confirmed. I think it's closer to seven now, right? Seven. 7% on Title I as well for next year.
So almost all of the increase in that $1.9 million special education is coming from local. LEA. The only other question that I had is the couple of things that I believe are not in this plan that I want to make sure and just highlight for future risk is this doesn't include, as I understand it, future prepaid costs for out-of-district. Is that right? Correct. So we're prepaying from FY26 for FY27. FY27. But there's nothing built in there to be able to pay from FY27 to
FY28. And there's also not any significant capital investment in this plan. Correct. Yeah. Thanks. There's no capital investment in question. Thank you. Just to clarify. Anybody else? Do you want me to do- Sure ... a little summary? Sure. Kathy has her hand up. There. Hi, Kath. Hey. I can't see you over there. Thank you, Stefan. Should I go like this? No, you're fine. I have a question. On the South Hampton Road budget proposal, I do not see any maintenance on their school. Is there a reason why? Sure. They're very clean. The building... Oh, I'm sorry. No, it's okay.
Okay. So the building base budgets are up to the principals, and there's no expectation that they are including large maintenance cost. So, people are generally budgeting like $500 for bark mulch for their playgrounds and things like that. The district's maintenance budget is covering maintenance needs for the schools. So, sometimes principals at the beginning of the year, don't budget anything for maintenance, and they might move a couple of hundred dollars from a line in there later because they need some things from Home Depot for their custodians to repair something. But in general, the maintenance department is handling all the maintenance costs
for the district. And where is that coming out of? What area? The maintenance department has their own line items in the expense budget. Okay. So I'm just like, that's one of our oldest buildings, and I'm just like, "How much are we appropriating for them in comparison to Westfield River?" Because Westfield River is a new building. Mm-hmm. Southampton Road is quite old. It's one of our most aged buildings, and I want to make sure that that building is maintained because we have younger
students there who they aren't as careful as the older students are with their movement. And what I did was I sent you pictures of the outside of the building. How is that money going to be appropriated? How is that determined? So that's a smaller amount of money, but I'm going to be able to cover doing some of that brick repair work before the end of this year. Perfect. But I'd say in general, just to a general point about what you're saying, that our director of maintenance, um, has a capital plan that he's constantly
updating and maintaining, and we review that, Stefan and I, with Chris Rogers, frequently to try to see what is popping up as a priority and what we need to address sooner rather than later. Okay. Because the pictures I sent you were only the front of the building. Right. So I want to make sure that the back of the... It was like zero when I did those. So I want to make sure that that building is maintained because it is one of our older buildings. And I'm not sure we're going to be able to do all the building this year, but we're going to definitely work on the forward-facing areas of the building.
And the upper, the A-frames up at the top where the painting is all falling apart and... Mm-hmm. That's something we can look at. I don't know if the pictures I sent you were clear enough to see that. Yep. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. Anything? Nope. You want to go first? Yeah, sure. Where do I start? Can you go back to the budget driver screen for a second? I don't have the budget driver slide in here. Okay. So you know what? I'm going to wing it. You guys are just going to have to believe me. I know some people don't believe me, but it is what it is. Increased cost of providing special education services is $1.9
million. Fair? So far so good. Increased contractual on both in and out of district transportation are $773,536. So that's three quarters of a million. An increase of $2 million in personnel. So when you look across the board, if you do some quick math with me, just kind of trust me here, you're at $4.75 million of increases. Just so that we know. Because I want you to understand how I got to the number that I got to when I gave
Stefan a number to shoot for, which is Schedule B in the program. So if you believe me, and I hope that you do, that we have a $4.7 million increase in cost. Just cost. This has nothing to do with trying to get a capital expense. It's got nothing to do with increasing maintenance. It's got nothing to do with increasing services. It's just cost. This is the second year in a row we've been in the exact same position. So if you believe me at $4.7 million, if you
take the entire property tax value at 2.5%, that's $2.3 million. So the entire 2.5% assessment of property value is $2.3 million. If you then add in $200,000 of local receipts, you're at $2.5 millionAnd then if you add in another million dollars of local receipts, money that's paid in fees that comes into the city, that's another million dollars. Now you're at 3.5 million. 3.5 million is the representative number of the total
amount of new income into the city for FY27 and the schools increase through no fault of their own. That's the key to this whole thing. Through no fault of their own, are looking at increases of 4.7 million. So my proposal to the school department was, I will give you 2% over your entire budget. That's 1.5 million. And you can keep the additional nearly $1 million in Chapter 70 increase money that comes into the city, because it's the city that holds
the purse, if you will. What are we at, 3.3 now? At 3.3, that's an increase of 3.6% over last year's budget. That number came out to 78 million, zero twenty-seven something. You got the number for me? I have it- Yep ... but it's really, really small. It's $78,077,093. $78,027,092.78. So that's how Schedule B came about. It wasn't because I was trying to figure out how to cut positions.
It was that if I use the entire sum of money that we have in new revenue, which I'm willing to do for the school, because if you notice, the number came out within like $100,000. I'm prepared to do that. I'm also prepared to ask the city to increase its tax rate, ready for this? To 4%. Now, I have people here sitting in the room that will scream at me when I say that I'm going to do that. But at the same time, those are the same people who ask me to give livable wages. You really have to figure out how to
balance this act together. So when I went to Shanna and Stefan, and I broached it briefly with my colleagues here, they told me I was nuts and they would do what they could do, and that's how we came about this number. The problem is, even at 4%, I am still $2.6 million short in the FY27 budget. These are not numbers that I'm just picking out of the air. These are numbers that I can substantiate. One of the other things that's hurting the school department and the city at large,
is the $3.1 million increase in healthcare. That just comes. There's no way to protect yourself from it. It just simply comes. So my request that I'm going to make to the finance chair at city council, Dan Knoppich, is to assist me to get 4%. Now, I know what people are going to say. "Mike McCabe, in the last two years, you have raised the city's tax dollars 10%." And they're going to be 100% correct. And the reason for that, if we paid any attention to the perfect storm memo that came out from the Massachusetts Municipal Association in October,
we have been losing money from the state at an incredible rate. I'm going to give you another figure. I am testifying in Boston tomorrow on these figures, so I kind of know them off the top of my head. In 2008, we received an unrestricted general government aid, $1.8 billion to share across the 351 cities and towns. That's in 2008. 18 years later, everybody's touting the governor's office for giving That's 1.3. So it's like the transportation budget, it's like the special ed budget, it's like
a lot of things. If you don't fund it, it has to be funded at the local level. So while we're on the subject, if the state itself decided to fund circuit breaker as it's supposed to, and decided to fund transportation as it's supposed to, we'd have another $1.3 million in our funding sources in order to cover this gap. Now, I don't know what the answer is, but the reason why I'm absolutely urging the council to charge more in taxes is because we have been
underfunding taxes for political purposes now for the last 10 years. And there's no other way to say it. It's for political purposes. So when you hear folks say, "Take another million dollars out of free cash, ask the mayor for another $2 million out of free cash," that creates a deficit. It means I don't have real revenue to back up real expenses. It means school choice being used at 1.8? 1.6? 1.6 is essentially the free cash. School choice, as you know, is essentially the free cash for the school department to be used in any way it sees
fit. But if you use school choice at 1.6, it means you never had the revenue to back up the expense, and sooner or later, that's going to create a funding gap. So right now, City of Westfield has a funding gap of $10 million to the good. Now, I don't want to confuse anybody. To the good. Meaning that the mayor and the city council, I see Ralph Figgie is here kind of nodding his head. The mayor and the city council can ask for a tax increase higher than 2.5% provided that it has a cushion between the levy limit and the levy
ceiling, and we do. But that cushion was only created by improper taxing.So if I go to council and I say to council, "I need 4%," the council's got to give me 4%. It can't say, "Look at us. We're going to try to do the good thing," and then circumvent the system and go back and say to the mayor, "Mayor, I know you're asking for 4%, and I know each half a percent is worth $500,000. How about we take $2 million more out of free cash, and we lower that rate down to 2%?"
The math doesn't work. So that's the long-winded story. You are owed an explanation. My numbers are good. My number is always available at City Hall. If you ever have a question, I'm happy to do it. Now, if you're sending me emails, they take too long for me. So I'm just an old guy. I would much rather you call the office. I'll give you a straight answer on anything you want to do. But that's kind of where we are. The budget picture, once again, is not rosy. And I'm not making any of these numbers up. So when I suggested the 78 million, my
numbers are way too small to read, the 78,027,092.78, remember, that represented a full 2% of the current FY26 budget, plus another million dollars, which came out to 3.36% increase in the FY27 budget. If I go higher, if I go to the 78,883,443 number, which is the number that's up on the board, it means I have to find an additional
$900,000 on top of the money that I don't have already. And I say I, we, collectively, I'm kind of running the budget shot of this thing. So if I use I, I don't mean it. It's a we thing. I don't know how to make it work. So that's kind of where we are. I realize that nobody wants to hear any of that. I do want to recognize that I do see some folks in the room that have worked terrifically with me in terms of the union and the bargaining units. I appreciate all the stuff that you do. This is not about you. It's about trying to fix a budget that is woefully out of whack through nothing that anybody here has done wrong.
We're stuck with a state that gives us mandates. They say they're going to give us 75%. They give us 61%. Two years ago, they gave us 40%. They say they're going to give us 100%, they don't give us any. So we're really in a very odd situation. That's my story. I'm sticking to it. Mr. Beau Sullivan. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you for all of that. I appreciate the explanation, and A, I know a lot of work goes into this. I know you do it on your side, and you work with Stefan and Shannon, and everybody else here in the first couple of rows on each budget that comes
through Stefan's office into the mayor's office, and then finally across our desks. These are not fun numbers ever to look at. We all would like to be funding this where we should be. But if I could meld what the mayor just explained and part B, I guess, of what the superintendent has given us due to, it's a sheet, and you can all see it at the end of it if you want to, because it should be out in the public between what could be class
sizes and what I would say will be class sizes. So I guess my plea here is not so much for the mayor. He explained his spot. He explained what he's going to be asking for. He explained why he's going to be asking for it. And he explained where it's going to go. If we go down to that first number, that 72,000,000.0. He's better with me with the numbers. You just took $8 million off, by the way. Sorry, 78 million, sorry. But you know where I am on that. The class size is going to the middle school between 25 and 26 are that number.
If we do the 78.8, we're at closer to the average of 20 per class size. That's the issue. The selling point for the mayor, the city council, and us, and everybody in this room, I understand where that is going to put everybody financially, but if we want to educate people, which is what we were all elected to do, this needs to happen. It really does. Twenty-six students in a middle school classroom, optimal isn't even the right word for it.
It's not good. You can fill in the blank with whatever word you want to put there, but I'll just say not good. It's not where we should be. I say this every single year. I've been doing this now, I think this is number eight. The mayor brought it up. He's testifying tomorrow. He's taking my words with him because I say compare us to everybody else and why does Westfield get the short end of the stick? You can put your own word there, too. Because we do. I was always told, I'm going to say it again. I do it every year. I was always told to compare Westfield to Pittsfield,
because we're about the same size, we're about the same community. $20 million. Twenty million they get that we don't get. Explain that to me. I don't care what the formula is. Yeah, I know. Wow. That was close. Twenty million dollars. West Springfield gets more than we do, by the way. How many students are in West Springfield? I love West Springfield. Mayor Reichel does a hell of a job job. But come on, they have two-thirds of the students that we have. They get more money than we doOur special education budget is blowing up. Our
transportation budget is blowing up. I don't want to hear a word from anybody in town. I will defend it. I voted for it. I was a proud vote about teacher salaries. They don't make enough, okay? I don't care what people say about... And there's a portion of this budget that compares our COPE team versus other cities. We are woefully behind in expenses in the front office, okay? So that's not anything anybody out there can say that we're top-heavy. We are certainly not top-heavy.
So this whole rant was really aimed at the council because they need to vote yes on the budget that the mayor's going to propose or at least the part of the budget that the mayor is going to propose. Can I say something? Yeah. He always gets the applause. I get nothing. It's because you let me go second. I just want you to know that you're not alone. Yeah. In front of me, I have the FY27 Mayor's budget worksheet, also known as the Mayor's cut sheet. And there are 4,399,072
cuts that have been made already to other city departments. Now, the question always comes up, "Why didn't you pave my street? Why didn't you pave the St. Paul complex? Why didn't you pave Apple Blossom? Why didn't you pave Doug Road?" I mention all three of those locations because in order for me to keep the funding at the level it is for the school department, it means I had to move other mon-- And I'm not blaming you. This is not me blaming the school department. I just want you to know that you're not alone in this. I had to withdraw that money from those projects that are supposed to be ready to
go next year. That's $2.25 million in next year's budget from engineering. So you're not alone. You are actually, as terrible as this sounds budget-wise, being treated better than most because we are convinced that we don't want higher student-teacher ratios. But if we don't vote a budget the way we need to have the budget voted, next year is worse. So let me go back to that 4% tax increase for just a second. When you take the cumulative amount,
and I see Jane taking notes, when you take the cumulative amount of 4% and then you add it to the old amount, obviously, I see some math teachers. Matt, we good? When you add it to the old amount, that amount is larger by a percent and a half. If you don't tax at 4% or pick a number, that number can't grow. If that number doesn't grow, it doesn't grow as revenue. You follow what I'm trying to tell you? It just doesn't grow.
So if you reduce that number from 4% down to 2.5%, down to 2% because it's politically expedient, next year's budget, I will guarantee you, as we sit here next year, will be far worse than this budget. Because there's no way to recoup that kind of money without either having new growth, new help in UGA, or new monies that are coming in at the state level. It just simply, we're not going to have it. So that's the tale of woe. I see Dr. Gunther. He's coming after me. Here we go. Go ahead, Doc.
Not at all. But I also love to share numbers. And I truly do want to thank-- I recognize the position that you're in trying to wear multiple hats here and really appreciate it. But some numbers that are really important from where I sit is if we were funding our schools at the same level, adjusted for inflation and school size and all of that, as we were in FY19, our budget would be $8 to $9 million higher than it is today, even in the new plan. If we were to even go back to FY23, it would be more
than $2 million higher than the higher plan. Unfortunately. Let me- Can I finish? Go ahead. Can I finish? Yep. And that is coming from a combination of those years of low taxes during the COVID years, in addition to the fact that Chapter 70, if it were keeping up with inflation, would have given us another $4 to $5 million a year from the state. If they were giving us out of district at the levels we actually have them in Chapter 70, we would have another $1.7 million in funding for our out-of-district special education students. Instead of getting $33,000 for
every special education student as an increment because of Chapter 70, we get $5,000. And so Chapter 70 is systemically underfunding us in inflation and special education, in addition to the fact that we don't get transportation funding like regional districts. Those are where the state is falling short. That, combined with the last five years or the early 2020s of our tax growth not keeping up, has kept this district well behind where it should be from my perspective. And so I
really empathize with the position you're in. I appreciate the work that you're doing to try to take the bad political vote to increase the taxes. And I would also say that this scenario one budget of 78.8 doesn't really move us much in the direction back towards where we were even three or four years ago in terms of funding per student after accounting for inflation. And so to me, that is the floor. I recognize how hard that is and how far away we are from where we'd like to be due to situations totally out of our control.
So people will have you believe that we're just overspending. That's the common theme, right? "You guys are taxing. You don't know what to do. You're gouging people. You're paying administration too much money." That's not factually true either, by the way. The reality is our state's municipal growth across the board, the 351 cities and towns, is 0.6%. That's 0.6. Let that sit in a second. That's 0.6. Inflationary rates have been 2.4, 2.5, 2.3, 2.1, 8,
4, 5, 2. Our rates have grown at 0.6. So this isn't really a matter. You can tell folks, you can get on Facebook tomorrow, write, "They're mismanaging our money," and get the axes and pitchforks. But that's not really what the case is. The case is there's simply not enough money to pay for the mandates that we are being asked to fulfill, and I'm not knocking any of the programs. I get it. Right? I get it. But if you don't have the revenue to cover the expenses, sooner or later you get to a tipping point, and I think we have one more year of this on top of it. I could be wrong, but I think that's where we are. Anybody else?
Members? Jeff? Kathleen? The other Jeff? Nick? Nothing? Bo? No, I'm good. You heard from me enough. I have a question under scenario number two, the 11 Unit A positions and reduction. Realistically, because I was a first-year teacher in Springfield Public Schools, and almost all of us got cut years ago, that was automatic. Two weeks before school started, about 50% of us were called back. So when we see that number 11, we're in April here. May might look
different. June will look different. Our grant writer is sitting out here. So the monies might come in is what I'm thinking. So we might only be actually looking at five, not 11. Am I right or wrong in that, or where are we headed with that? Who do you want to ask, me or... Who are we going with? Stephan. This is Springfield. Stephan. So last year, for example, there was an earmark that came our way that allowed us to bring back a couple of positions. I don't anticipate that this year. There are no grants that we know of that are coming in, and really a lot of grants that come out
now are for additions, not to cover basic expenses, that in some regards is actually supplanting. If you were paying for a position under LEA, and then you try to fund it through grants, it's not allowed. That's part of the discussion. So, I don't see that happening. If I'm being truthful, I don't see it happening. Right? Right. Mrs. Owen? I think we're not the only district that's having these problems. I'm looking at South Hampton. They're doing an override. So, that is a reality. I know West Hampton just voted their override down. South Hadley's in dire straits.
So, we're not the only ones, and so I really appreciate Mike for doing all the work that he's doing to try to survive. We have a great district here, and we want to keep it. And so we've got to do what we've got to do to make sure that our students are being taught. It's just really important that we keep up the good fight. I'm appreciative of Mike going down and talking to the state. I was down there the other day, and they talked about supplemental budgets. And so they did appropriate that.
So in fact, we're just waiting for some of the... The governor just to sign her name to some of them. I'm not sure if she's going to override them or veto them, but the state sees that we have a situation here. It's not that they're blind to this situation either. They really think education is one of the most important things that we have in our state. We're number one when any testing goes through. We are number one, and we've got to maintain that. So I think you may see some movement there. I'm not sure, but I think so from what all the senators
were saying when I was there. Thank you, Mike. You're welcome. One final thing, I guess. There's good news, if possible. If we do this correctly and we pay attention to what our auditors are telling us, if we pay attention to what our city auditor is telling us, if we pay attention to what our treasurer, collector, and our assessors are telling us, we will be able to get out of this nosedive without an override. It will take two years to do, because there's some things that we have to be willing to pay for.
And I know as soon as everybody leaves, "Oh my God, he's forecasting more tax increases. That's all the guy does is spend money." But you have to fix it, because if you fix it now, you won't face an override in 2028. Because if you don't fix it now, you will go to an override in 2028 as sure as I'm sitting here, because there just simply won't be enough money to sustain it. So, with that, I also wanted to talk briefly about the budget. There was some confusion as to the budget with regard to the comprehensive school,
so I want to be clear. I spoke of a comprehensive school. I, me, Mike McCabe, wanted a comprehensive school. That was my goal.I looked around cities and towns, and I found a city of comparable size that built a comprehensive school for $400 million. And then I reported out that the share of an override... Sound familiar, Ralph? I reported out that the share of an override was $713 to the taxpayer every year for 30 years.
What was missed in that equation by some was the fact that MSBA would fund half of the $400 million, leaving the math work out to be $200 million times 4.5% times 30 years, which is how I arrived at the $713. I was not trying to hoodwink anybody. Those are the real numbers. It was my hope that when we went with the SOI for the tech school, that they would realize at the state level... It's my hope. I'm not one of the other six people.
It's my hope that when it goes to the state MSBA program and they look at it, they're going to say, "Holy crap. Your tech is 100 years old." Because it will be by then, right? "Uh-oh. Your high school is also 70 years old. Why don't we both do them together?" Now, this isn't unheard of, but I was convinced by good people... I see you, Bruce. I was convinced by good people that we should just try for the tech academy. That came later. And the theory on the tech academy is when we talk to the MASC,
and Stefan has his contacts that he has, and the MSBA, they are funding tech academies. And because they're funding tech academies, then it became the notion that we should go for a tech academy because that's most likely to get funded. That is the total overall scope of my thought process. I can promise you to this day, as we sit here, I would still be in favor of a comprehensive high school, because I think by 2035, we're going to be 100 years over in this school, and we're going to be 70 over in that school.
So we're going to need both of them. So that's my take on that portion of the budget. But again, my guess is an override that nobody really wants to pay. I just wanted to clear it up. Any other questions? Seeing none, is there a motion? Motion to adjourn. Second. Motion has been made and seconded. Mr. Sullivan? You want me to take the roll? Yeah. Jeff Goslin? Yes. Jeff Gunther? Yes. Kathleen Hillman? Yes. Mo Sullivan? Yes. Kick Sullivan? Yes. Mike Terrell? Yes. Chairman McCabe? We are adjourned at 6:46.