The schools need more money for special education, the selectmen want an eight-man fire shift, road spending is being cut by almost a third, but taxes would still go up nearly 5% …
“We’ve got a lot of work to do, guys,” Chairman Dave Ulmer told fellow finance board members Tuesday night.
The week after next, after a public hearing on Monday, March 28, at 7:30 in East Ridge Middle School, the finance board will begin looking at the 2016-17 town and school budget proposals. The budget requests include:
- Nearly $140 million in town and school spending that, without added non-tax revenue by using some of the town’s $13-million surplus fund balance, would require about a 4.9% tax increase.
- A 5.72% increase for schools, bring the education budget to $90.9 million.
- A 2.12% increase for town departments, for $34.7 million in town departments spending that includes $132,000 for a half-year of eight-man shifts at the fire department.
- A $900,000 reduction to the road allocation, down to $1,875,000 from this year’s $2,750,000, following a relatively mild winter.
Finance board member Marty Heiser told his colleagues they should muster their courage and be ready to do some cutting — not just pass along to voters the requests from the selectmen and school board.
“I do think there’s a separation of powers, and there’s an assumption the Board of Finance is going to look at this and reach a judgment,” Heiser said. “The feedback I’m getting is these increases are too high.”
The finance board was a bit dismissive of the selectmen’s recommendation that it bring the tax rate down to 3.5%, feeling the Board of Selectmen had backed away from the opportunity to use its “non-binding recommendation” to come out in support of a cut to the proposed 5.72% school spending increase.
The selectmen, Ulmer said, had taken the spending requests that would need a 4.9% tax increase, and lowered the tax hike by assuming the finance board would use $1.2 million of the town’s $13-million fund balance. “That got them to 3.9%,” he said.
To get from that 3.9% to the selectmen’s recommended 3.5% increase would mean a further reduction of about $500,000, he said.
So by calling for a 3.5% tax rate while assuming use of $1.2 million from the fund balance and insisting that their own town departments’ budget — seeking a 2.12% increase — was “cut to the bone” and shouldn’t be further reduced, the selectmen were using a back door to suggest the finance board make a $500,000 school cut, Ulmer said.
“You need a cut of $500,000 to get to the 3.5%,” Ulmer said. “They knew the rough order of magnitude of that cut when they made their motion.”
Heiser wasn’t sure a $500,000 cut would get taxes down enough.
“That’s if we think a 3.5% increase is palatable,” he said.
Heiser objected to the schools’ “constantly increasing headcount” of employees, when enrollment has been declining for a decade.
The enrollment study for the school board last fall by consultant Milone and MacBroom shows a decline from 5,162 in the last school year (2014-15) to 4,996 for the current year (2015-16) to 4,895 projected for next year (2016-17).
Ulmer said that the Board of Education’s budget request represented an increased employee headcount in the school system, whether the comparison was to this year’s budget as approved last spring or to the “actual” budget following some teacher hirings when school opened in the fall.
“Budget to budget, it’s 20,” Ulmer said of the added staff. “But they’ve already hired eight and a half.”
The board did acknowledge that, with their commitment to improve special education, Superintendent Karen Baldwin and the school board had an argument for a substantial increase.
“It’s essentially all special education,” said Ulmer. “Eight or nine of the heads are special education.”
Michael Raduazzo, a former school board member recently appointed to the finance board, agreed there were different perspectives on the two boards.
“From our seats here, we need to look at the entire town,” Raduazzo said. “The Board of Education is looking at every student. We need to look at every taxpayer.”
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