The 2010-2011 Budget, Take Two

As the town heads toward its second budget referendum next Tuesday, May 18, Newtown’s majority, silent or otherwise, has a fair number of representatives explaining to the rest of us what this town really wants and needs. The current iteration of the proposed 2010-2011 budget is betting that the town wants a 2.43 percent tax increase and 15-21 fewer teachers.

That bet, of course, is absurd on the face of it. No one wants higher taxes or larger class sizes. But everything is relative, and relative to the $104.5 million budget proposal rejected April 27 by 51 votes, this budget plan spends $269,000 less, shaving roughly a half mill from the tax rate while freeing up $435,000 in previously allocated revenue for use in the schools. So, relative to the last budget, this proposal looks better, but is it 51 votes better?

Something else is becoming evident for this second vote: positions are hardening. This is especially true for one group of school advocates that believes the school district has already given up too much as the result of the initial budget review process by the superintendent, the Board of Education, the Board of Finance, and the Legislative Council. The budget rejection became for them not a challenge to attempt once again to limit the damage, but to push back. The school board itself is divided on how to proceed, but board member David Nanavaty spoke for the hardliners. “To truly believe that we need to compromise,” he told the board, “is not recognizing the power that this Board of Ed has with the people they can rely on to support [the budget].”

One unfortunate aspect of the pushback is an attempt by some to energize their base of opposition by charging subterfuge by town officials, who have allegedly “hidden” town-side spending growth in their accounting of debt cost savings. This may seem sinister to those who have not been paying attention, but the truth is that the town has followed the same standard budgeting and bonding practices for years — practices that actually benefit the school district. The town has always included in its budget every dime of borrowing costs — even borrowing for major school projects, including the high school expansion. Do school supporters really want the school district to absorb those borrowing costs in its annual budget for the sake of laying claim to whatever interest rate savings may come their way from time to time? The subterfuge charges are a red herring and should be wrapped up and discarded with the trash.

Having said that, Mr Nanavaty may have correctly calculated the collective power of committed school supporters in Newtown. The worry expressed by school officials over the effects of the budget squeeze on the quality of education in town is not just theatrics — it is the sincere and frustrated response by education professionals to a future of lowered expectations and diminished possibility. It is a serious concern. The shame of it is that an extra $500,000, or $1 million, or $3 million may only temporarily mitigate the problem; it certainly does not solve it. Raising the tax rate by five percent or more — a political impossibility in our view — would still leave us with the bulk of the schools’ problems left to solve.

The arc of the solution to our fiscal problems extends beyond this fiscal year, beyond this town, and beyond this state to the national and global economies. For the present, the best Newtown can do is to pass a budget, live within its means… and never accept the status quo as good enough.