The Freeze That Wasn’t

When any group of people faces a big challenge, the need for painful sacrifice, and the emotional stress that goes along with it, someone always observes in bleak consolation, “Well, at least we’re all in this together.” Something of the sort was said at a Board of Finance meeting at the end of February, as the town faced a $800,000 shortfall in state grants and other expected revenues that precipitated an unprecedented midyear reduction in expenditures by a like amount.

The finance board was commiserating with school officials, who had faced a similar challenge when they anticipated a $600,000 cutback in the school district’s Special Education Excess Cost Grant. “We froze everything in October,” Superintendent of Schools Janet Robinson told the finance board, referring to discretionary expenditures that would be banked against the possibility that the state would fail to deliver on its obligation cover the portion of the costs the school district incurs for special education that exceeds normal per pupil costs. With both the town and school administrations working to make up the difference through savings, somehow Newtown’s taxpayers would not have to make up the difference for the economic downturn and the state’s fiscal intransigence.

The town’s cutbacks touched almost every department, and the sacrifices included everything from an $83 expenditure for the Labor Day Parade Committee to $10,000 for police recruitment, $22,908 for technology administration, and $41,458 for a Parks and Rec summer program. A $350,438 reduction in debt financing costs brought on by lower interest costs and higher town credit ratings helped a lot.

It was unclear just how much money the school district was saving with its “freeze.” The Board of Finance never saw those numbers, but as it turns out, the state money for special education came through and covered all but $2,593 of the school district’s shortfall. So, in February when the school and town budgetmakers got together to discuss their respective deficits and revenues, finance board members surmised that the school district might want to help the town cover its actual $800,000 shortfall with some of the funds “frozen” for the district’s perceived $600,000, but actual $2,593 shortfall. Rather than voting on the idea on the spot, the finance board members granted school board chair Lillian Bittman’s request that she have some time to discuss the idea with her full board and get back to them. The Board of Finance members trusted that the response would come before the money was spent on other things by the school district. “We’ll be more ethical than that,” the school board chair assured them.

Fast forward one month. The school district’s anticipated shortfall has grown from $2,593 to $103,440, and school officials are equivocating about those unspecified “frozen” expenditures. “I should never have use the word ‘freeze,’ because freeze denotes that everything just came to an absolute halt,” the superintendent explained to the school board last week. “We’ve had some expenditures, and we will continue to have expenditures,” she explained. She mentioned the school district’s critical need for supplies, including paper towels. In other words, the frozen money had been thawed and encumbered.

What is clear now is that the school district had no serious plan to cover significant state cutbacks in special education funding. We are glad that the predicted shortfall was just a false supposition and not a fact. Otherwise, the town would be on the hook for the full amount. Though it may still be waiting for a formal response, at least the Board of Finance now has its answer.