Expressing concerns about how difficult a year this is for many residents, the Legislative Council voted April 6 to reduce the Board of Education budget request by $300,000. The council also made smaller reductions and changes to several Board of Selectmen budget lines, before approving the final spending proposals that will go to voters at referendum April 26.

Deliberations on the proposed school budget began with a subcommittee recommendation to cut $557,000, which was a number equivalent to the cost of new hires and a number of capital items that Councilman Phil Carroll believed could wait. Carroll noted that the increase to the BOE proposed budget, even without contractual salary and benefit increases, was $1 million more than the increase in the previous year, and the full increase would roughly double the increase in the previous year’s budget.

After deliberation and an accepted amendment, Carroll’s request was reduced by $300,000 rather than $557,000.

The council also voted to reduce the Lake Authorities line item by $11,157 and the library’s budget by $24,531.

Voters are being asked to consider an overall 2022-23 budget request totaling $129,026,038, and representing a 4.7% or $5,806,484 increase over the current year budget of $123,219,554.

The BOS proposal is $46,891,399, a 7.7% or $3,369,543 increase over the current budget of $43,521,856. The BOE proposed budget, following the cut approved by the council, is $82,134,639, a 3.1% or $2,436,941 increase over the 2021-22 budget of $79,697,698.

Note that the BOS budget includes debt service on all borrowing including bonding for school district projects.

If both budget requests are approved April 26, the mill rate would increase from 34.65 to 34.67, a .02 mill or .07% tax increase — less than one-tenth of one percent. A mill represents one dollar for every $1,000 in taxable property.

Referendum polls at the Middle School gym will be open April 26 from 6 am to 8 pm.

While discussing the budgets, Councilman Ryan Knapp proposed the Lake Authorities reduction. He said that the line item of $64,982 in the First Selectman’s budget had a 20% increase over the previous year, and suggested keeping the line item flat at $53,735.

“Last year, we gave them a substantial increase as well,” said Knapp. “They justified it because of additional duties and responsibilities because of COVID, and increased lake traffic.”

Knapp said that while this year the lake authorities said that the increase was for salaries and capital improvements, he said the authorities also acknowledged they had enough in their fund balance for capital improvements. Additionally, he didn’t feel the council had a sufficient opportunity to scrutinize the lake authorities’ budgets.

“We haven’t received the information on this increase that we’d require from any other outside agency,” said Knapp.

First Selectman Dan Rosenthal expressed misgivings on the cut, noting that the authorities include multiple towns and “if we’re not paying, it will not reflect well on us if everyone else does.”

Knapp said that the town pays a big share of the lake authorities’ budget. Rosenthal countered that it is because Newtown has a lot of frontage on Lake Lillinoah and Lake Zoar.

Knapp said that every year, the town accepts the increases because the council feels like it has to.

“Each year, it’s ‘we have to do it, we have to do it,’ and the budget just goes up and up,” said Knapp, who said he didn’t know if an outside agency has “the ability to oblige us to spend money.”

Rosenthal said that he would check the by-laws of the authorities.

Councilman Chris Gardner agreed that a 20% increase was “outrageous,” but felt the council “missed the boat on this issue” and should have brought it up sooner.

“This is the eleventh hour, and we don’t know our liabilities,” said Gardner. “Are we creating a liability?”

Councilman Matt Mihalcik suggested increasing the budget by 8% to keep the increase in line with current inflation, but his motion failed 4-8; Knapp, Chris Gardner, Angela Curi, Lisa Kessler, William DeRosa, Michelle Embree Ku, and Dan Honan voted against. The motion to set the line item to no increase passed, 7-5; Chris Gardner, Tom Long, Mihalcik, Ku, and Honan voted against.

Library Reduction

Next, Knapp targeted a cut for the library, cutting it to $1,381,469, meaning no increase from the previous year’s budget. Knapp said this was due to conversations about the council wanting to set a policy about outside agencies like the library “asking for increased taxpayer contributions” while carrying a significant fund balance.

Knapp said in the past the council has asked that the BOE and the Parks & Recreation department spend down fund balances. He also said the library received “significant paycheck protection funding” from the federal government for pandemic relief, “despite no break in revenue from the town.”

“Now is not a good time to be asking the taxpayers for more,” said Knapp. The motion to cut the library’s increase passed, 8-4, with Mihalcik, Long, Ku, and Honan voting against.

Ku made a motion suggested by the council’s Finance and Administration Subcommittee earlier in the evening, to use an additional $100,000 from the town’s fund balance towards spending down the town’s debt service.

Knapp said that due to inflation, $100,000 in the fund balance could effectively only have the spending power of $90,000 next year, and the rate of return on money in the fund balance is low.

Finance Director Bob Tait said the town already has a plan for spending down the debt service using the fund balance over years, including $280,000 for this year — and spending down extra this year would mean a bump in the line item in future years. The council passed the proposal, 7-5, with Curi, Kessler, DeRosa, Long, and Carroll voting against.

During discussion on the Board of Education budget, BOE Chairman Deborah Zukowski said that the district “reviews every item in the budget.”

“The budget increase is more than we’d like, but it reflects the needs of students post- pandemic,” said Zukowski. “We try and be conscientious about the impact on the community with increased scrutiny of each line item.”

Superintendent Lorrie Rodrigue said that when the administration puts its budget together, it “goes through a thoughtful process” and that even before the budget went to the Board of Education, she had already made more than $1 million in cuts from the administrators’ requests.

She said that any cuts the BOE would make to meet a smaller spending increase would almost definitely not come out of new staff, but would more likely come from interventionists, clerical positions and purchases of new textbooks.

“I can’t take from those positions,” said Rodrigue, who noted that the positions were elementary school positions to meet increased enrollment at those levels. “We’ll have to reach deep into other areas.”

Long said that the proposed cut was less than 1% of the total budget, and that overall enrollment was down, especially at the high school. Long said it was a “difficult time,” with inflation at 8%, and that people were struggling, especially those on fixed incomes.

Rodrigue answered that the school system couldn’t shift staff around like that, and couldn’t just send high school teachers to the elementary school.

Suggesting A ‘Disconnect’

Ku, a former BOE chair, said that the numbers tendered for new teachers are “all justified,” and new elementary school teachers are “needed.” She suggested there was a “disconnect” in how the council looks at the BOE budget versus how it looks at the BOS budget; noting the council would not look at how an increase related to a previous year’s increase in the BOS budget.

Knapp mentioned the bus contract, suggesting the overall cut be reduced to give the schools an opportunity to negotiate a better contract with a different transportation company. Knapp said the town’s current provider, All-Star Transportation, had “frankly failed in its primary responsibility to pick up kids and get them home on time.”

Mihalcik made a motion to reduce the cut to the BOE from $557,195 to $300,000; and it passed 9-3 with Chris Gardner, Honan, and Ku voting against. The adjusted budget passed, 10-2, with Chris Gardner and Honan voting against.

During public participation, parent David Stott said he has three children in the school system and has seen they have been suffering from learning loss due to the COVID-19 pandemic. He called it “unfathomable” that the Legislative Council would “remove human capital and hard investments in the schools.”

“It’s a sad day when a PTA has to sell T-shirts and raffle tickets to meet a school’s needs,” said Stott. “I ask you to support the budget recommended by the superintendent and Board of Education. It’s them, not you, who know what the schools need best.”

Parent Kate O’Grady said that standardized testing scores “are not as high as they used to be.”

“The students, teachers and parents are working as hard as they can,” said O’Grady, “but there has been learning loss.”

She said the Republican BOE members have been discussing how to get the scores back up.

“To make sure that happens, we need the staff,” said O’Grady. “We cannot cut from the budget. We need all the money we can get to increase scores.”

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Associate Editor Jim Taylor can be reached at jim@thebee.com.