A gallant effort.
You know folks, cuts are going to be painful. The budget is so tight, any one thing will trigger an emotional reaction from the affected parties.
The time it takes to do the analysis delays getting the message to the entire community. It delays getting the layoff notices out to the teachers that would be affected.
Let's get real folks. Cuts hurt. There will be hurtful cuts no matter what happens if the override fails.
Let's focus on getting the vote out for the override to pass!
That is a challenge that will require a whole lot of effort and we have so little time.
May 22 is rapidly approaching.
- Get informed. Read the article Michael Morton wrote about the School Committee meeting Tuesday night.
- Talk with your neighbors.
- Get out the vote for May 22.
If the schools are the town's highest priorities, then why isn't that budget fully funded? Why isn't the override about funding the lower priority items in the budget rather than saving schools and library.
ReplyDeleteThe two steepest cuts in the budget are the school and the library. Schools asked for 58 million and even with the override will get 54. The library asked for 928k and will get 653k. Why is the town council focusing on these critical areas?
There are two other areas of the budget that are confusing to me. Under the benefits section of the budget summary, there is a new line item of $1.2 million of teacher health insurance. There is no equivalent line item in the 2007 budget. Is this a new cost? And below that there is something called a compensation reserve of $350k. What is that? That is $1.5 million in costs that didn't exist in 2007 but are now necessary to provide equivalent services?
Anonymous, as to why the town council isn't funding the highest priorities, I would put that question to them. I think they should have gone for the $4 million override to fully fund the level service budget for the schools and the town. They chose otherwise.
ReplyDeleteThey also chose to ignore the advice of the Finance committee on the override amount and the use of the stabilization funds. They are accountable for their decisions. They put us all in a bad position.
I will continue to ask them for a 5 year operating budget plan. The town departments have all drawn up a 5 year capital budget. The operating side of the budget could be just as easily prepared. Clearly, it is a forecast and can be adjusted as it goes, but they should at least let us know what the future looks like. Doing otherwise is fiscally irresponsible.
The answer to the new line item as I recall being provided at the May 1 open forum was that this was the line item to cover for the union contract negotiations. All the contacts are due this year. What increase is expected is lumped into the one line for the budget. It did not exist last year as a separate line as the increases were part of the existing contract and found in the normal salary and compensation lines of the budget.
I will disagree on two points.
ReplyDeleteFirst, I don't know if $4 million is required to provide level services. We do not have access to the detail budget and are left with little more than blind hope that the budget is appropriate. It may be, but since the full budget isn't provided, who can tell.
Second, I don't think a 5 year operating plan is much good. That long a window typically assumes an economic environment similar to the environment that exists when the plan is made. Over a 5 year cycle, that is rarely the case. The capital plan is a prime example - it was created when the newspapers were talking about Dow Jones Averages of 39,000, NASDAQ was above 5,000 and there were more paper millionaires than actual ones. Following an economic plan that was built in that environment doesn't make much sense today, as the climate has changed so much.
If you are correct in that the $1.5 million in new salaries and benefits is in one line, then the school budget increase is more than 13% originally requested, because the majority of those salaries under contract go to the teachers and school staff.
The comment on another one of your posts, you said you didn't follow the logic of how to arrive at the 6% budget increase. Assuming level services, the cost of providing those services should increase roughly by the increase in the student population multiplied by a factor for inflation. This assumes level service, not an increase in service requirement as implied by your comment. So in Franklin's case, a reasonable proxy for the budget increase would be:
Student population factor: 101.4% (assumes student population grows by 1.4%)
Multiplied by an inflation factor of 1.04 (assuming 4% inflation).
This would imply that a reasonable proxy for the increase in the budget should be 5.5%. The school, factoring in the separate line for wage increases under contract, is asking for something on the order of 3x this amount. That seems way out of line.