WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Mount Greylock School Committee on Tuesday decided to bring a fiscal year 2027 budget to Thursday's public hearing that maintains level services while seeking double-digit percentage increases in the assessments to each of the district's member towns.

 

The committee knew those increases were coming from a draft budget it saw at its March 3 meeting, but the numbers changed over the last couple of weeks — driving up the anticipated assessment to Williamstown and leading to a slight reduction for the budget hit to Lanesborough.

 

The draft budget in front of the committee on Tuesday includes a 13.61 percent increase in the district's assessment to Williamstown and a 10.99 percent hike for Lanesborough.

 

In real dollars, those assessment increases translate to $2,018,000 and $751,000, respectively versus the FY26 assessment to pay for the current school year.

 

Williamstown's assessment is up 0.9 percent from March 3 to March 14 while Lanesborough's is down 0.8 percent, in part because, per the regional agreement, each town pays the operating cost of its elementary school (and splits the cost of the middle-high school based on enrollment). Some of the increased cost in the last two weeks impacts Williamstown Elementary more than Lanesborough Elementary.

 

Tuesday's draft is likely to be relatively unchanged when the School Committee holds its annual public hearing on the budget on Thursday, the same night the committee likely will vote on the final FY27 budget — and resulting assessments — it will send to each member town's annual town meeting in the spring.

 

Superintendent Joseph Bergeron told the committee that the administration and the elected body's Finance subcommittee had been making modest progress on mitigating the assessment increases to both member towns before the district received two gut punches.