Date: Fri 17-Apr-1998

Publication: Bee

Author: CURT

Quick Words:

edink-council-budget

Full Text:

Ed Ink: The Council Shorts The Schools

This is the time of year that local budgetmakers are left gasping by their own

belt tightening. So when word filtered down from Hartford this week that the

General Assembly's Appropriations Committee had approved nearly $600,000 in

additional payments to Newtown for road repair, education, and PILOT grants

(payment in lieu of taxes for state property), there was much speculation

locally over whether Newtown's Legislative Council would let its belt out a

couple of notches before the town votes on the proposed $57-million budget

later this month. Specifically, school supporters allowed themselves the

slight hope that some of the $800,000 cut from proposed educational funding

this year would be restored.

The additional money still has to be approved by the General Assembly and

endorsed by the governor, but the council assumed the extra revenues were a

sure thing and made a few last minute changes to its budget plan Tuesday

night. Included in those changes was the restoration of $75,000 to the school

budget. This small gesture to the Board of Education should have been expanded

to include the full $275,000 in "real" school funding reductions the council

made earlier. The $275,000 is the amount of the reduction that remained after

the initial $800,000 cut was mitigated by savings realized through a leasing

plan for a technology upgrade for the schools and by the town's offer to fund

$125,000 in school capital improvements out of its own account for capital

expenses. Evidently, the Legislative Council would prefer to have the extra

money from the state sitting unallocated in its own capital and non-recurring

account rather than in the school budget, where it could be doing some good.

In the context of the overall $32-million education budget, the $200,000 the

council is shorting the school board may not seem like a lot, but its absence

from the school spending means another year of making do rather than making

progress in a school system that already lags far behind other comparable

districts in per-pupil spending.

When the Legislative Council initially decided to reduce the school budget, we

believed its members when they assured the public that they had made the cuts

only because they were absolutely necessary to keep the tax-rate increase at

an acceptable level. One council member pointed out at the time that it was

the state that had fallen down on its funding responsibilities, not the town.

The council then came up with a tax rate that it deemed acceptable.

Now with the prospect of additional money from the state, it appears that the

school-budget reductions were not absolutely necessary to achieve the goal of

an "acceptable" tax rate. The council's reasoning for the cut no longer

applies, and yet most of the school budget reductions still stand. The

council's decision to continue to withhold $200,000 from the school budget

calls its credibility into question.