To the Editor:
Our Board of Education (BOE), Board of Finance (BOF), and Board of Selectmen (BOS) have much to consider in this year’s budget deliberations. Those deliberations will soon begin in earnest, though preliminary discussion has wisely already occurred in joint meetings of all three boards. As we all now know, there are very significant long-term capital needs to address as well as the usual annual budget determinations to be made.
The good news is that just-retired First Selectwoman Lynne Vanderslice has laid out in detail a plan by which the schools-related portions of those costs can be addressed over 10 to 15 years without overloading town bonding as existing bonds are retired. She also outlined expected significant new funding sources even as newly issuing revaluations raise the question of the balance between funding by our town’s residential as opposed to commercial landowners.
As our new First Selectman Toni Boucher has noted in pointing to significant town capital needs (on top of school capital needs) to be delineated in a report expected to be issued in January, the way ahead is not an easy one.
Under our Town Charter, what the BOF comes up with as our town’s total annual budget is, as a practical matter, the last word on the subject since a rejection of it by residents at the Annual Town Meeting creates a daunting and uncertain-of-outcome process for next steps.
As strongly and rightly requested by all of our town boards each year, citizen input is really important and much sought after by those boards. And in that regard, I have a suggestion related to the BOF’s plans for a town survey in February or March. A BOF member during the Jan. 9 BOF meeting in fact specifically encouraged residents to comment now on the survey, not “criticize after the fact.” In that spirit, I offer these thoughts on the survey that expand on what I offered as public comment at that Jan. 9 meeting.
If the BOF is going to continue to conduct a survey, let’s at least have it be a randomized statistically significant one done by an independent surveyor to make it as meaningful as any survey can hope to be.
The BOF’s majority has asserted in each of the last two years that it relies in significant ways on its own survey of residents’ opinions in making its decisions on the town budget notwithstanding large turnouts of residents at public meetings last year, almost all of whom spoke in favor of the proposed school budget as presented by the BOE and then cut by the BOF. So in light of the BOF majority’s reliance on surveys we should, of course, try to make the survey as accurate as possible. The recent election in which as little as four votes separated winner from loser in the BOF race suggests a very closely divided Wilton populace on budget questions.
The survey that the majority of the BOF has relied upon in each of the last two years is not based on random sampling. Instead, its responders are self-selecting. It also uses questions asking if the responder wants increases or decreases of various percentages without putting those questions in the context of the consequences of that choice. The obvious answer to the bald question, “Do you want a tax increase?” is a resounding “No.” The more useful yet more subtle question is one like this: “Would you pay on average an additional $150 per year in real property taxes if it meant not having to cut nine teaching positions from our schools?”
Our town has experience in doing a telephone survey that reaches a statistically significant number of residents who do not self-select. That kind of statistically significant independent telephone survey was done in connection with the work that went into developing our town’s very impressive POCD (Plan of Conservation and Development) issued in 2019. Its cost would not even be a rounding error in a budget of over $135 million.
If the BOF is going to continue to conduct a survey, let’s at least have it be a randomized statistically significant one done by an independent surveyor to make it as meaningful as any survey can hope to be.
When the subject of survey “consequence questions” came up at the BOF meeting on Jan. 9, BOF Chair Matt Raimondi stated that the prohibition on the BOF making line-item changes to the BOE budget limits the BOF’s ability to craft consequence questions like the one referenced above. However, a survey done without consequence questions at least in hypothetical form becomes, if not completely meaningless, far less informative than it would be otherwise, and why should there be any restriction on asking hypothetical questions in a survey of opinion?
There’s a way out of this conundrum: Now that School Superintendent Kevin Smith has presented his proposed budget (subject to BOE review and approval, of course, which should happen before the BOF’s survey is scheduled to go out), we can link specific known consequences as enumerated by the BOE itself with financial consequences for the taxpayer in very specific terms and with the BOE, not the BOF, indicating the resulting necessary line-item adjustments. That allows each resident to make an informed decision as to what kind of change in the BOE (and BOS) budget they believe is best.
I offer the following as an example of a way to craft such a consequences question: Suppose the BOE tells the BOF that the consequence of a 1% reduction in the BOE’s proposed budget will likely mean, subject to BOE final determination, cutting out A, B and C specific programs and/or X number of teachers. For survey-question purposes, we will then have a percentage reduction linked to a specific consequence that is not of the BOF’s creation so as not to violate the BOF’s line-item constraint. Frame the resulting consequences question like this:
“A 1% decrease in the BOE’s proposed budget would represent a $___ savings in taxes on average for each residential taxpayer. Would you be willing to see a 1% reduction in the BOE’s proposed budget if it means losing the following school [programs/teachers]: (specifically listed based on BOE-supplied information)?”
If the BOF chooses to list a different percentage reduction to assess public opinion about it, the consequences can be adjusted accordingly.
Board of Finance Vice Chair Stewart Koenigsberg kindly invited me during the Jan. 9 meeting to come up with specific consequences-question suggestions for the BOF to consider for its survey. I’ve offered my suggestion above; so let me now extend Stewart’s very thoughtful invitation more generally to all of you reading this letter to consider how you would craft questions that include consideration of consequences. As the BOF has wisely made clear, it welcomes and values public comment and hopes to receive lots of it.
Steve Hudspeth
This is interesting, but I’m afraid that (weirdly enough) I have to share the BOF leadership’s unease about getting into something touching line-item cuts; our ex BOF chair may have been Wormtongue’d into advocating for them, but the less we associate cuts to specific line items with the BOF, the better, and if the BOF is prepared to repudiate that going forward, then I think everyone ought to encourage them to do so.
If the BOE were willing to actually participate in this – and I know Dr. Smith has privately given the BOF information about the impact of proposed cuts in the past – I could see it making sense in that case; we’d be giving residents a reasonably accurate picture of the consequences of their decisions for their finances and the school. Though obviously the survey would still have to be professionally weighted in some way to have any real meaning.
However, offering questions like this based on resident proposals – looking at the budget and coming up with our own uninformed ideas about what might change – seems, frankly, less useful, and potentially even harmful if voters think they’re supporting a cut to one thing and end up actually producing a cut to a different thing. Heck, my kids are not particularly athletic; if you offered to save a bunch of money by eliminating the football program and I were slightly more of a sociopath than I am, I’d probably vote for that cut, but I don’t think the district would turn around and actually eliminate football just because the BOF had cut its budget in response to a survey question about football.