New Assessments for Dighton and Rehoboth

The Dighton-Rehoboth Regional School Committee approved new operating assessments for the two towns at Tuesday’s meeting.

Last month, School committee chairman Aaron Morse dismissed a discrepancy in the FY’24 school budget as a “clerical error.” Sue Pimental, Chief Compliance Officer for the Town of Rehoboth, said miscommunication between herself and outgoing District Business Administrator Robert Baxter resulted in a shortfall of $10, 494.

Rehoboth’s assessment is now $20, 526, 871 and Dighton’s assessment is $11, 412, 971.

“I apologize for the inconvenience and for the confusion,” Superintendent Bill Runey said. “This took place on my watch and we have to be better from the standpoint of being more diligent. This is a result of not one, but two, clerical errors. It’s not a good reflection on the administrative team I take responsibility for.”

“There was a warrant article that had the original assessment number and when that motion was on the floor it was amended, it was changed by roughly $10,000. So that was approved,” Runey said at the September 26 meeting, noting Baxter “inadvertently” looked at the warrant, he did not look at the meeting minutes  so he put the number that was preliminarily a part of the motion.”

The total education budget which was approved at the May town meeting was $21,233,677. That figure represented an increase of 4.4 percent over last year.