Five school articles up for vote at Marblehead meeting

MARBLEHEAD – The School Committee will submit five articles for this year’s Town Warrant – but one of them, an annual “safety valve” financial article, only received a 3-2 majority at a Friday morning meeting.Committee members unanimously favored placing the $25.45 million Glover School proposal, a $450,000 special education revolving fund, a $40,000 school tuition revolving fund and school building repair funds before the voters at the May Town Meeting.They were also unanimous about dropping an article that would fund school technology purchases, which Superintendent of Schools Paul Dulac said would not be needed this year.However, they split sharply over an article that would allow them to use Fiscal 2012 funds to cover any inadvertent overspending in the Fiscal 2011 budget. Dulac pointed out that the article was actually used several years ago to cover unexpected special education expenses.”This is good business practice,” Dulac said. “It’s just there in case we need it.”The article appears in the warrant every year and is usually defeated as unnecessary, according to committee member Jonathan Lederman. “There are times when emergencies come up,” Lederman said. “This is like a storm that tears down part of the seawall and the town has to rebuild. That’s the type of scenario we’re talking about.”For the past two years, however, the article has been opposed by committee member Dick Nohelty, who also serves on the Glover School Building Committee.Nohelty expressed concern about the way the article looked and its possible effect on voter support for the Glover School, which failed in a debt exclusion override vote last year. “I want us to demonstrate fiscal responsibility,” Nohelty said.Committee Chairman EuRim Chun said she could support the article if wording were added to restrict its use to “catastrophic additional expenses” and wound up voting against the article as written, along with Nohelty.Committee members Patricia Blackman and Kathleen Leonardson supported placing the article in the warrant, along with Lederman.