Finance Board Examines School Bd. Budget Statements To End-Of-Year Realities

By John Voket

After reviewing before and after documentation on school district cuts and expenditures as the 2008-2009 fiscal year drew to a close, finance board member Joe Kearney commented, “The title of this story should be ‘The Board That Cried Wolf.’”

In characterizing the local Board of Education, Mr Kearney agreed with his chairman who suggested that Newtown taxpayers hear the hew and cry of school board members attempting to motivate support for their annual budget proposal in March and April — only to have the details fade from memory once the annual spending package is passed.

In an attempt to keep these matters on the taxpayers’ radar, Board of Finance Chair John Kortze asked his board to endorse a document that compares several points or statements made during this year’s often contentious budget deliberations to the financial realities that emerged in the final hours of the 2008-2009 fiscal year.

Presenting the document during the finance board’s last meeting June 25, Mr Kortze said his first and biggest issue was with district officials “using the kids” as pawns during the budget deliberation process.

The finance chair pointed to statements made by school officials in February and March that suggested more than 50 teaching positions could be cut or compromised because of proposed budget cuts, while the final analysis of adjustments approved by the Board of Education in late June revealed the net loss of teacher jobs equaled one-half of one kindergarten position.

The total saving to the district for that single reduction, which Mr Kortze summed up as “reducing one person from full-time to part-time,” amounted to $42,134 of the district’s $66 million approved budget.

Over the course of about 25 minutes, Mr Kortze went on to outline five other specific issues he said exhibited significant differences between what taxpayers heard during the budget preparation and what really happened at the end of the year. A final point in the memo was not directly related to the school district budget adjustments. It reflected concerns about the status of the town’s pension, the details of which were previously reported in The Newtown Bee.

Dr Robinson Responds

After reviewing the memo, Superintendent of Schools Janet Robinson responded with some perspective on the finance board’s contentions. During her interview, Dr Robinson repeated the fact that a lot happens during the time between when she and school board officials make their February presentations to the Board of Finance and the council, and the end of the school’s fiscal year June 30.

“I do not know how to be more candid than I am,” Dr Robinson said. “I am truly speaking with the knowledge that I have at the time. I will continue to try to make the budget process as transparent as I possibly can, but the school district is dynamic, and there will always be some changes that occur.”

The next item of disparity in the finance board memo involved projections for electrical utility costs as outlined in the budget proposal. Taxpayers heard early on in the budget process that a cost-saving program which the district had previously in place was ending.

But just a few days after the budget proposal was sent to public referendum by the council, School Business Manager Ron Bienkowski announced he was able to get that program reactivated.

Dr Robinson said at the time that Mr Bienkowski had been in negotiations to lower rates while budget meetings were ongoing, but she could not hint at possible cost-savings without a signed commitment from the utility.

Mr Kortze, referring to video and audio tapes of deliberations, referenced glaring inconsistencies among the many “arbitrary and inconsistent” electricity rate increase percentages tagged to each district school facility, when on the town side, Public Works Director Fred Hurley reported a single standard rate increase would take effect townwide.

In the end on June 30, the Board of Education would endorse $278,000 of the total $866,667 in adjustments to their current budget from electricity savings.

“I meant what I said at the time that I said it,” Dr Robinson continued. “This is going to happen every year as we fight to find savings right up until June 30.”

The next point of pre- and postbudget comparisons came over what the district originally characterized as a “dangerous and scary” assumption of a five percent increase in health benefits costs, which at the time of deliberations was hovering around seven percent.

“This board spent the better part of a half-hour on this issue alone trying to understand why, for the last number of years, we are told a number that has never gone up...and has only come down,” Mr Kortze contended. Even compared to the risk of assuming an end of year decrease from seven to five percent during deliberations did not come close to the final benefits increase which Mr Kortze said was just 2.34 percent by June 30.

Dr Robinson confirmed the rate increase was being quoted during deliberations was high.

“It was seven percent when I said the assumption to budget for five percent was dangerous and scary,” she said. “But only one union with single coverage is down to 2.34 percent.

“My increase is 5.97 percent, and the average increase for all other [district employees] is just under five percent,” she said, adding that by transferring all the district’s life insurance coverage to the health carrier, the district squeezed an additional one-time, one percent additional discount on the health coverage for 2009-2010.

Stimulus Fund Application

The next item involved school officials reporting during the budget proceedings that an anticipated $5 million in federal economic stimulus funds would be restricted to developing new special education programming, and could not be used to “supplant” any budget items. But subsequent to the 2009-2010 budget being approved, the district learned it could apply $274,010 toward existing programs, creating the corresponding amount of savings at the fiscal year’s end.

Dr Robinson made no apologies, saying the district received permission from the state Department of Education to apply half the stimulus funds to ongoing programs after the budget was approved at referendum.

The fifth item of concern involved criticism doled out via a letter to the editor in The Bee, in which Mr Bienkowski publicly took town Finance Director Robert Tait to task for reducing the level of budget details in a legal notice posted in the newspaper. The memo quotes from Mr Bienkowski’s letter, which stated: “We cannot instill confidence and accurately inform the community if important information is not being disseminated.”

Mr Kortze countered that given the comprehensive video and audio broadcasting of each meeting during deliberations in The Newtown Bee, on the newspaper’s website, and on the local public access cable channel, “if you wanted to be informed, it was everywhere.”

Dr Robinson concurred, saying while “this year was the worst in not being able to establish credibility with the community,” public access to every moment of the 2009-2010 budget process “was the best I’ve ever seen — everything was available.”

The final issue involving the school district came around again to enrollment projections versus realities. Mr Kortze said his board has faced criticism in being told to “not debate the numbers,” but recent projections have been “much higher than the actuals.”

The superintendent warned that this issue will not become any easier to define moving forward, as the two population experts the district formerly used to report student enrollment projections have retired, and the state is no longer providing the numbers either.

Dr Robinson said she might make a personal appeal to one of the retirees, or possibly use a company from Massachusetts if she is required to by the school board.

“But I’m not sure there would be any benefit now,” Dr Robinson said. “With the economy the way it is and so many people moving in and out of town, we might just do better assuming flat increases except for kindergarten.”

In the end, both the Board of Finance memo and Dr Robinson agreed that the town could “do amazing things” if the taxpayers had more confidence in the government. The superintendent acknowledged that during the budget deliberations, she was directed by school board leaders not to make any projections or assumptions beyond the benefits projection, and to stick with numbers provided by Mr Bienkowski that were the last best points of data up to the minute.

“Nothing was being deliberately held back on my part,” Dr Robinson concluded. “I believe strongly that this is a budget that belongs to the community and will try to answer their questions to the best of my ability.”

And the superintendent said she would welcome the opportunity for further collaboration and discussion with other boards, including finance and the Legislative Council. “There is nothing that is off limits in the discussion as it is a public document,” the superintendent said.