What Happened in Dennis and Gill—Two Underride Case Studies

Dennis

In September of 2003 the town of Dennis, by Special Town Election voted in favor of an underride. This was in direct response to a Proposition 2 1/2 Override of $176,000 that was passed for the Cape Cod School Budget at the Special Town Meeting in June. It turned out that the amount was not needed for the school’s budget.

In a showing of good faith to taxpayers by the Board of Selectmen, acknowledging that the town many times in the past had diverted money to the schools; they agreed to put forth the underride. It was understood that by voting for an underride would only return the town to its original levy amount and that schools or other town services would not be damaged in the process.


Gill

In 2003 the town of Gill passed an override. It was minimal, the excess would equate to approximately .12 cents for every thousand dollars of value on the tax rate.

In 2003 Gill placed a condition on the salaries of town employees tying their COLA increase to the COLA granted in the Gill-Montague teachers’ contract. The teachers’ contract was ratified, and while it included an increase in salaries, it was not specifically designated as a COLA increase and therefore town employees received no increase. Select Board members felt that was not the intent of the voters and placed a question on the special town meeting to allow the 3% increase that was raised by taxation to go to town employees.

At that same meeting the town also decided that an underride reducing the levy limit by that same dollar amount, would be put to the voters at the annual election in May 2004 to correct the error when the teachers’ contracts were ratified. The amount of the reduction was PLANNED to equal the number by which the Gill-Montague FY04 budget was reduced after the override passed in 2003, $10,833.

In both cases, unlike the Amesbury underride question-where the Council Majority willy-nilly picked a number ($1 million) to go to the ballot—the towns of Gill and Dennis actually used an UNDERRIDE in response to an earlier OVERRIDE attached to results identified for the voters.

Sound familiar? See these previous blog entries:

http://nounderride.blogspot.com/2007/10/look-at-other-underrides-1-upton-in.html
http://nounderride.blogspot.com/2007/10/amesburys-underride-would-be-one-of.html