Groups established to hammer out reimbursement issues
By Ken Powers Contributing Writer

Southborough - The name has changed, but the mission is the same - to figure out how to split up the lumpsum reimbursement payment of about $11 million coming to Northborough and Southborough as a result of the Algonquin Regional High School addition and renovation project.

The Southborough Board of Selectmen, at its Sept. 25 meeting, voted to change the name of the group from the Algonquin Reimbursement Committee to the Regional Reimbursement Working Group.

"We felt the name didn't fit because it's not really a committee," Selectman Bill Boland said. "It's really a working group that will work with the other town."

At the meeting, the selectmen officially named the members of the five-person Regional Reimbursement Working Group - Boland, Advisory Committee member Marty Healy, former Selectman Roger Challen, Town Administrator Jean Kitchen and Town Treasurer/ Collector Brian Ballantine.

The night before Southborough's Board of Selectmen meeting, the Northborough Board of Selectmen also changed from calling itself a committee to calling itself the Regional Reimbursement Communication Team.

The working group and communication team are necessary because the two towns have been unable to agree on how the state reimbursement should be distributed - based on the terms set forth in the school district's joint agreement between the towns or according to the method set forth in Chapter 70B. Depending on the method used, about $1.5 million more could be headed to one town rather than the other.

Southborough's position is that the reimbursement should be distributed based on the terms set forth in the regional school agreement, while Northborough maintains that the method outlined in Chapter 70B is the route to take.

The disagreement of how to divide the money began last year when the Massachusetts School Building Authority changed how reimbursement is distributed, changing from incremental payments over a 20-year period to two lump-sum payments in successive calendar years.

Boland said Healy was selected for two reasons - because he serves on the town's financial advisory board, but also because he was a member of the group that created the regional agreement for the Algonquin Regional High School addition and renovation project.