Salary Too Low? Move On!

To the Editor:

Much to my surprise I picked up my copy of The Bee this week, and I read a front page story about the Board of Ed giving raises to a few town employees. Much to my dismay it turns out to be some of the employees of the school system that have been making headlines lately, Janet Robinson, Linda Gejda, and Ron Bienkowski all are going to be receiving raises ranging from 1 to 2.5 percent. In these tough economic times when all public employees seem to be the scapegoats for all the financial problems that the states are having it seems that this raise is out of the ordinary for a Board of Ed that was pushing to save the town money by cutting out  our owner-operator bus drivers in our school system. It should not come as any surprise to us that the school board and the administrative staff go against the taxpayers wishes ,they have done it in the past  and continue to be out of touch with what the townspeople want.

In the humble opinion of this taxpayer maybe they should use the monies saved by firing and dismantling the owner-operator bus drivers (against a large majority of the town’s wishes) and take that money that they saved and give themselves an even bigger raise (to stay in line with the surrounding towns of course) or better yet offer to put the monies in escrow in case we are forced to spend funds on any future litigation that the town has to defend itself against in regards to the labor complaint of the owner-operators.

If the Board of Ed or the upper echelon of the school system think their salary is to low compared to other towns maybe they should move on and we can hire someone who does what we the taxpayers task them to do instead of the agenda of a certain few individuals in town. Somewhere I remember hearing that town officials work for us even though they may or may not be underpaid. Thanks again to the Board or Ed for showing me what I really want done with my family’s hard earned tax dollars, which by the way is from a two-income household that both taxpayers pay their taxes from – their municipal no-raise employee salaries. Thank you

Kent Bonsignore

Park Lane, Newtown                                             September 24, 2011