The deliberative session is far more than just deliberation.

It also makes important decisions that affect how much money the school district can spend and the kinds of choices voters will have at the elections in March. Voters who sit this one out may wake up to some surprises on Election Day, according to Ryk Bullock, the town and school district moderator. He has also served on the Secretary of State’s Election Task Force on the Physically Challenged Voter since 2003.

This year, the deliberative session of the School District Meeting is 7 p.m., Tuesday, Feb. 3, at Bedford High School. The school district follows official ballot law, also known as Senate Bill 2, or SB-2. The town has a traditional Town Meeting form of government.

Once upon a time, towns and school districts had Town and School District Meetings – sometimes festive, sometimes feisty, but almost always community affairs where voters had three official duties – deliberation over what direction the town or schools should go, determining how much should be spent, and deciding whether to approve it all.

But, in the mid-1990s, low attendance at those meetings was cause for concern among some state lawmakers, who thought a few hundred people should not be making decisions about millions of dollars of appropriations in towns with thousands of registered voters.

Their solution was a deliberative session, which retained the duties of deliberating and determining appropriation amounts but deferred final decisions to voters at the actual election, where turnout tends toward thousands, not hundreds.

Bullock applauds the intent of the lawwhich aims to get more people to participate, but he also sees some potential pitfalls. Assume, for example, the school district had a proposed ballot article about spending a certain amount of money on a new road or driveway to a school.

At the deliberative session, voters could not scratch the proposal off the ballot, but they could adjust the amount up or down as much as they want. If it was $1 million, the session, in theory, could boost it to several million or shrink it to a few dollars. Such a scenario is unlikely, but the very possibility it could happen shows the power deliberative sessions still wield.

“If no one shows up or very few people show up, then who knows what you’re going to see on the ballot?” Bullock said. “A very small group of people at session one can change the complexion of the overall budget.”

A further disadvantage is the information that comes out in the course of debate at the deliberative session is not available to the voter when he is making the final decision at the ballot box. “The problem is that people are making decisions without the necessary information,” Bullock said.

In an ideal world, he would like SB-2 to be reformed to give Election Day voters more choices. He thinks they should see on the ballot the original proposed appropriation, and what, if any, changes the deliberative session made, so they can pick between the two.

In the meantime, however, his observations boil down to one message for voters – show up at the deliberative session. “I’d like to have as many people as I can get. I think it’s that important,” Bullock said. “We don’t have that kind of attendance. It’s unfortunate.”

At next week’s deliberative session, four articles will considered:
Article II asks for $988,023 to cover additional costs of the second year in a three-year contract with teachers. The contract provides an average salary increase of 5.2 percent for teachers, maintains competitive salaries and has employees sharing more of their health care costs. The increase on the tax rate will be 29 cents per $1,000 assessed property value.

Article IV proposes $61,964 for custodial and maintenance staff in the second of a threeyear contract. The per-hour wage goes up 65 cents and has employees sharing more health care costs. The tax impact is 2 cents per $1,000 assessed value.

Article VI has $142,314 for the first of a new three-year contract with the employee union that includes secretaries, food service workers, teacher aides and other support staff. The wage increase is 65 cents and has employees sharing more in health care costs. The tax is 4 cents per $1,000 assessed value.

Article VIII is the $56,838,229 operating budget for the 2009-10 school year. The budget accounts for salaries, benefits, utilities and all other costs associated with running the six schools and district offices. The estimated tax impact ranges from 31 to 45 cents.