Thanks to all of you who attended the 2/2/26 Town Council meeting, in-person or virtually, or sent written public comments. The recording is here.
State Legislative Update: Senator Jo Comerford and Mindy Domb gave a legislative update that included a section on K-12 education. The bottom line is that there is nothing happening on that front that will help our districts next year – this is a longer term effort. They urged Town Councilors to work with leaders in other similarly impacted communities to pressure the state.
2026-27 Budget: The only real info that came out of the meeting with respect to next year’s budget is that the Town Manager announced that the health insurance increase will be 8.5% rather than the 18% they were bracing for. This will help the school budgets (and town budget) significantly.
ARMS Roof: Town Council briefly discussed the auditorium section of the ARMS roof, and whether the Town of Amherst might pay for the repair of that section out of the surplus – that section of the roof is not included in the project partially covered by MSBA (state) funds because it isn’t quite old enough. Initially, the School Committee had declined to move this request forward because it was clear that Pelham, Shutesbury and Leverett would not be able/willing to pay their share and there was no indication that Amherst was willing to foot the entire bill. That seems to have now changed and thus the School Committee did formally submit a request to the Town of Amherst for the entire amount. The Council President did not want to consider the roof until the Town Manager submits all of his financial orders for using the surplus. Those orders are expected at the February 23rd meeting – and hopefully this will be soon enough to allow for the Regional School District to include this section of the roof in the larger roof project which will be going out to bid shortly. The rest of the roof is scheduled to be replaced this summer.
Upcoming Meetings:
Regional School Committee – Tuesday February 10th, 6:30 PM – there should be a budget update as part of this meeting
Amherst School Committee – Tuesday February 17th, 6:30 PM – there should be a budget update as part of this meeting
Amherst Town Council Meeting – Monday February 23rd, 6:30 PM – The Town Manager is expected to present his financial orders for how to use the surplus at thi meeting. If that happens, those financial orders would then be referred to the Finance Committee before coming back to the following Town Council meeting for a vote.
District 1 Meeting – Councilors Jill Brevik & Cathy Schoen are holding a District 1 Meeting on Sunday February 8th at 3pm in the North Amherst Library. Details here.