BERKSHIRE RECORD • NOVEMBER 17-23, 2017 A5

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By Richard Allen

It’s time for some straight talk about the quaint little white school building in South Egre-mont.

Enrollment in our school district has been steadily declining for years, and ev-ery analysis shows it will continue to decline as the population in our area both declines and gets older. Our school district’s total enrollment has dropped below 800 total students, and education experts say that when that happens educational quality begins to suffer.

We should all be very concerned about this, and should oppose spending ed-ucation money foolishly.

Schools today need mod-ern resources if they are to provide quality education. One room school houses can’t provide those resourc-es. Studies show that one room school houses don’t provide any student ben-efits compared to normal

schools, and actually harm students after first grade.

Taxpayer rebellions over school costs are rampant in south county, and will get more heated as school en-rollments decline and costs increase. Enrollment in the South Egremont school has decreased in recent years, and realistically will never exceed 20 students. Of those, the ones from Egremont can be counted on one hand, and roughly half of them are from out-side our school district! So we’re paying – and paying dearly – to educate nonlo-cal children.

It costs about an extra $175,000 per year to run the South Egremont school; that’s how much the school committee has allocated for the school for next year. Since anyone in the dis-trict can go to the South Egremont school – not just Egremonters – that cost is borne by all the taxpayers in the district.

But it’s not fair to ask taxpayers in, for exam-ple, Sheffield to pay extra to allow a few privileged parents to hold onto their outdated views about one room school houses.

And it’s not fair to Egre-mont taxpayers to ask them to pay that extra cost for the same reason. And it’s really not fair to the students who attend the school in Sheffield to do with fewer resources in or-der to pay the cost of oper-ating the South Egremont school.

For all the foregoing reasons, it is as inevita-ble as the sun coming up tomorrow that the South Egremont school is going to close. Wishful thinking won’t change that. So what should we do about the building?

If you’ve never seen the building, you should. It’s a small, very plain building with no architectural sig-nificance on a little quarter acre lot. If it were for sale, it might well sell as a tear-down, because it’s not in great shape. Even if it were in great condition, its mar-ket value would be – on the best day ever with a New York City buyer – $200,000, and probably much less.

In private hands, it might be usable as a book-store or yarn shop or some-thing similar. In public hands it is pretty much worthless. Yes, we could always find some public use for it, but that use could easily – and much more cheaply – be provided by other town buildings.

Rational people wouldn’t spend money to “repair” the building if that spending didn’t result in the build-ing’s value increasing cor-respondingly. And getting value out of repair spending isn’t easy when the oner-ous requirements for public buildings must be met.

So how did the school’s proponents lull us into be-ing irrational? They first claimed we could get “free” grant money for the proj-ect and then slowly jacked

up the estimated cost while asking us again and again for “just a little bit more.” Guess what the latest es-timate is? $431,000!! And that doesn’t include ev-erything. There’s still no estimate on the all-in total cost. Do you feel taken ad-vantage of?

The only sane excuse for spending that money that I’ve heard from supporters is that we’ve already spent so much that we might as well finish the job. It’s true that $346,500 has been set aside for the school - $226,000 in taxpayer money and $120,500 in grant money - but money actu-ally spent so far is less than $25,000, most of it from grant money.

The rest is sitting there and could be reallocated to other purposes. Or – heav-en forbid! – returned to tax-payers.

If we’re going to spend money on preserving a building, why don’t we spend it on a more impor-tant building down the block from the school, the Congregational Church in South Egremont?

That building has histor-ical significance, isn’t ugly and is large enough to actu-ally be of public use!

It’s not too late. We should all urge the select-board members to stop pursuing a dream and act responsibly. Nostalgia shouldn’t drive government decisions.

Richard Allen is a resident of Egremont.

Time to consider closing the South Egremont school

By Paul Bagnall

LENOX — The success of homeowners using the short-term rental service Airbnb captured the attention of the Planning Board.

On Nov. 14 members of the board held two workshops at the Town Hall to address con-cerns and questions residents had for short-term rentals. Airbnb falls under the cat-egory of short-term rentals, which is an umbrella term for privately-owned proper-ties being rented out for 30 days or less. This past year Lenox residents were among Berkshire homeowners who-raked in around $2 million of extra income by making their homes available for short-term rentals through the Airbnb service.

The board hoped the work-shop could help find the right balance between residents earning extra money through the service and local hospi-

tality businesses. Residents participating in the work-shop raised concerns about discouraging the average homebuyer from a short-term rental hotspot such as Lenox.

“A key purpose of the fo-rum is to get people talking from a perspective where our points of view are con-sidered,” Chairwoman Pam Kueber said.

Airbnbs get a lower tax rate without the cost of a lodging tax. It puts an added stress on business owners that make their living through the hospitality industry, accord-ing to Town Planner Gwen Miller. The average tax rate for residential $12.21 tax per $1,000, while commercial gets a $15.18 tax per $1,000.

The Planning Board’s workshop the group of resi-dents, homeowners, and business owners alike with the percentage of homes in town that are available for short term rentals and what

category they fall under. This includes homes listed on services like Airbnb, Flip Key and Travelocity. Short-term rentals tally up all the quali-fied rentals within a town, generating a percentage of three types of homes avail-able to renters. According to short-term rental algorithms, Lenox has 56 percent single- family homes, 30 percent multi-family homes, and 15 percent unknown listings.

Currently, there are 164 listings for available short-term and 124 unique prop-erties qualify as well and are buildings located at lots. Room tax is divided between town and state; Lenox re-ceives about 6 percent from the state by check, while the state collects 5.6 percent according to the Planning Board.

Lenox regulates short-term rentals by using three branches of town govern-ment: The Planning Board handles all the zoning bylaws involved with short-term rentals. The building inspec-tor makes sure homeowners are up to code before renting. The Tri Town Health depart-ment makes sure the water is sanitary and the conditions of the kitchen up to code. The fire chief ensures the building is up to fire code.

Airbnb’s help full time residents earn a little extra money. Most tourists stay for around a week.

“It’s a privilege to live in this town,” resident Sue Baum said. “And it’s great that we have this issue.”

Lenox Planning Board holds workshop to deal with residents’ concerns about Airbnb short-term rentals