Budget Advocates Show Solidarity At Budget Hearing

By John Voket

A local grassroots group committed to informing the public about the schools’ role in Newtown’s municipal financial landscape helped expedite a Board of Finance public hearing on the budget Wednesday at Reed Intermediate School while driving home its message. Leading off the public comments, Citizens for Newtown (CFN) co-founder Sarah Beier told the finance board members that many of those gathered in the audience shared her ideas about the Board of Education’s segment of the budget.

Then, as Ms Beier concluded her comments, instead of inviting others to the microphone to assert their support of similar sentiments, she simply asked all those who felt as she did to stand in solidarity. Moments later, almost every person in the room was on his or her feet.

Following the meeting, Ms Beier told The Bee that she wanted to help influence a drastic turnaround from previous years’ meetings, during which residents lined up for a turn at the podium to express virtually the same viewpoints.

“We decided to try and do it this way this year out of respect for everyone’s time,” Ms Beier said. “Many of us are sensitive to the fact that, for the selectmen and the Legislative Council, and especially the Board of Finance, this process drags on for months. We simply wanted to make our point and not keep everyone there until 11 at night.”

Ms Beier, who said she has four young children, appeared to be among many who attended because of their own experiences with the school system. Following her comments, several other parents spoke in support of the special education curriculum, individually thanking both town leaders and educators on behalf of their children who were exhibiting educational and/or social advancement thanks to the district’s initiatives.

Others who spoke touched upon various points. Resident Myra Leuci said she supported the need for charter changes that would allow the town to legally establish a contingency fund.

She said after the meeting that if such a fund existed, it might have been used to cover initial emergency expenses related to a December 30 oil spill at Reed School, which forced the school board to reallocate $216,000. The reallocation forced numerous cuts and freezes that impacted everything from supplies to professional development within the school system.

School board Chairman Elaine McClure spent nearly ten minutes reading a long list of cuts her board made in order to find the school’s $216,000 contribution toward the overall expense of responding to and remediating the spill.

“This was already a difficult budget for us, and we’ve already paid more than $300,000 for the spill,” she told the finance board. Ms McClure also noted unanticipated costs related to the relocation of Board of Education offices from Canaan House, more than $100,000 in extra special education transportation expenses, and an underfunded budget for heating oil as contributing to the school board’s burden.

“All these cuts represent programs and services the taxpayers voted to support in last year’s budget,” Ms McClure said. “We’ve been asked to put a freeze on everything we possibly can — this represents more than $230,000 in approved projects.”

Karen Craig, who spoke briefly, called for the Board of Finance to support economic development as a means of producing revenue, instead of looking to sacrifice additional funds from the school budget.

Nearly everyone who spoke individually expressed appreciation to either the schools’ leadership, the finance board, or both for their work to craft a final budget that was both as responsive to community needs as possible while remaining fiscally responsible.

In that vein, Keith Jacobs stood and lavished praise on Superintendent Evan Pitkoff, who sat near the front of the room. One particular comment brought smiles to the faces of the finance board, and a ripple of chuckles from the crowd.

“I hope you realize what a bargain we have in Superintendent Evan Pitkoff,” he said. “If you took all the time that Mr Pitkoff puts in days, nights, and weekends in comparison to his salary, I think you would find he makes less per hour than if he worked at Burger King!”

Following the meeting, finance board Chairman John Kortze said that he understood and appreciated the audience’s overall willingness to keep comments brief.

“The board understands that there was an attempt to keep the hearing short and sweet,” Mr Kortze said. “We get the picture that a lot of people in town feel the same way [about the Board of Education’s segment of the budget].”

Mr Kortze acknowledged that a more raucous hearing last year also sent a strong statement to his board.

“There were a lot of comments last year, that a resounding [public] vote to pass the budget on the first try might influence us to pass this year’s school budget [as presented],” he said. “But the public needs to understand, and I think they do, that the town is still looking to do a large number of projects and we still need to be fiscally responsible.”

Ms Beier said she could not agree more about everyone needing to be as fiscally responsible as possible, while recognizing the need to keep Newtown’s schools competitive and serving a rapidly growing student population.

“As I said at the meeting, we added 1,200 new homes in town between 1997 and 2003,” Ms Beier said, quoting from building department statistics. “We’ve had tremendous growth and I don’t think our school system has ever caught up.”

She cited several years in that timeframe when school populations grew by 180, 215, and 250 students.

“We’ve had too many years of these lean school budgets, and given all the uncontrollable costs like salaries and benefits, it’s time we looked at our students as investments, not as each student equaling a dollar figure.”

During the course of responding to a question from the audience about costs related to the oil spill, First Selectman Herb Rosenthal reminded the crowd to come out next Wednesday, March 9, to a town meeting in part to support bonding $1 million to underwrite expenses related to the oil spill.