CCB MEDIA PHOTOS
Crowds of students, teachers and parents squeeze into the selectmen’s meeting room at Harwich Town Hall last night.
HARWICH – A recall effort is being organized to unseat Harwich Selectman Peter Hughes over his comments on the school department budget.
Hughes has spoken strongly against the increase to the Monomoy School department budget. The budget would require Harwich to pay an additional $688,000 over and above the allowed two-and-a-half percent increase of last year’s budget.
Flyers were posted on cars in the Harwich Town Hall parking lot last night alerting people to the recall effort, which has a Facebook page.
The board voted last week that they would not support any amount in the school budget over and above a two-and-a-half percent, saying the rest of the town departments have to live within the confines of Proposition 2 1/2.
Proposition 2 1/2 is the state law that requires any municipal budget increases above two-and-a-half percent to be approved first at town meeting and also by voters at large at the town election.
Larry Ballantine, chairman of the Harwich Board of Selectmen.
The new Monomoy School District combines the Chatham and Harwich school districts. A new high school for the district opened last year.
A standing room only crowd packed into last night’s Harwich selectmen’s meeting to comment on the school budget issue. Harwich resident Lou Urbano said the town should hold a community forum on the issue of the school budget.
Parents, teachers and students urged selectmen to support the higher school budget. A number of Monomoy High School students were among the crowd to urge the board to support the school budget. Students said they would choose to attend other schools if Monomoy’s funding is cut to eliminate teachers and programs.
Later in the meeting, selectmen discussed the wording of the warrant for the Spring Annual Town Meeting and decided to include language in the warrant so that people in favor of an override tax increase to pay for the higher school budget can vote for it.
