Around 40 people were in the house Wednesday night, March 20, when the Board of Finance held a public hearing on the Board of Education‘s proposed school budget in the Middlebrook School auditorium.
Chair Ruth DeLuca presented the BOE’s $93,538,159 budget proposal, which represents a 4.88% increase over the current $89.2-million budget, emphasizing that it was a status quo figure.
“Once again we are budgeting to just maintain our programs,” she said, pointing out that $600,000 had been shaved from what was originally a 5.56% increase.
Two days earlier, First Selectman Toni Boucher presented the Board of Selectmen‘s $35,876,501 budget, which represents a 4.07% increase over the current $34.5 million budget.
Should these budgets be accepted with no further cuts, Board of Finance Chair Matthew Raimondi warned that residents will see an average tax increase of 11.6% in order to meet the funding.
Around a dozen Wilton residents shared their feelings with town officials at the hearing, both for and against the school’s budget and related tax increases.
“The homeowners of Wilton are going to bear a significant burden with the real estate taxes … I simply ask you to rethink what’s essential. Is there any room for cutbacks?” resident Peter Slavin said.
Resident Louise Shames, who has no children in the district, shared a different opinion.
“As a senior citizen, I am happy to pay extra taxes to support our schools,” she said, citing their importance to all Wilton property owners.
DeLuca explained that Superintendent of Schools Kevin Smith‘s original budget plan included several area investments in the school district, amounting to a 9% increase.
“None of these new investments are in the budget tonight,” she said, explaining that 80% of the final figure is due to contractual staff salaries and benefits.
She highlighted changes in the ways instruction is carried out at this time, driven by new technology and social changes.
“We are beyond the three R’s … The challenges of education have never been greater,” she said.
DeLuca said her board had looked closely at additional reductions but could find none it would deem acceptable.
“Any further budget reductions would have to come from programs and staff,” she said. “We just don’t have anywhere else left to go. Below 4.88 [percent] will require uncomfortable choices. Depending on the magnitude, we will be forced to look at curriculum development time, administrators, teachers and class size, teacher stipends, art, music, sports.”
As he did on Monday, Raimondi outlined the reason taxes must go up following this season’s revaluation, which shifted the tax burden more onto residential property owners rather than commercial businesses.
“The average home value in Wilton grew quite a bit,” he said, noting that even a budget with no increase would necessitate a tax increase of around 5% for the average Wiltonian in order to cover the cost.
Raimondi stressed that the BOF wanted feedback from the community, including responses to its online budget survey.
“We want to hear from all of you,” he said, “and that’s why we’re all here today.”
“When we do go through our deliberations we consider the views of the citizens expressed by direct communications … We consider the financial resources of the town. We consider whether the Board of Ed and Board of Selectmen can find savings in their respective budgets,” he said, as well as revenue, debt service and general funding.
But he called citizen input the BOF’s most important consideration.
Several residents gave financiers food for thought in their deliberations at Wednesday’s hearing, both in person and over Zoom.
“I really do support this budget, as painful as it is,” said Deborah McFadden, who identified as an empty nester on Social Security.
“I do think the 11% is a difficult pill to swallow, but I assume this is a one-year bump and this is not going to recur … For one year I can live with the bump. Not happy, but I want to support the schools,” she said.
Resident Barbara Geddis offered a less rosy prediction.
“This is not a one-year bump … I’m very, very concerned with long-range planning,” she said.
Peter Wrampe, Republican Town Committee chair, praised the BOE for its reductions but said it should do better.
“I know that when you take a hard look at the budget, you can always find that little cushion left over … Would we want to spend that money if it was coming out of our own pockets?” he said.
“I came here to stay,” he said of his many decades living in town. “Don’t drive me out with increased taxes.”
Democratic Town Committee chair Tom Dubin spoke in favor of the proposed number, stating that Wilton spends less per pupil compared to comparable neighboring districts and has kept numbers relatively low over the past 10 years.
“I hope that your full budget request is approved, but primarily I want to thank you for that decade of fiscal discipline,” he said.
Sara Sclafani, who ran unsuccessfully for a seat on the Board of Education this past fall, indicated that the budget number should be even higher.
“What is there to be proud of about a budget that is so lean, that is squeezed so tight, that a few unforeseen costs result in a district budget freeze, so that even money that has been allocated for some of these costs can’t be spent,” she said.
“Let’s put forth a budget that we can be proud of, one that lets us grow and be better and move forward and purchase books,” she said.
Regarding town- and school-facility maintenance issues that came to light in the fall, with an accompanying price tag that will likely top $100 million, Sclafani said it should be no surprise to Wilton, given the recurring deferment of maintenance that she described as poor financial management by the town.
“The only thing that surprised me is that we would even think about nickel-and-diming our kids to make up for the town’s poor financial planning,” she said.
While he offered thanks for the work of public officials, resident Al Bartek shared his disapproval with some of the financiers, whose prior budget strictness he believed had hurt the district too much.
“I refuse to thank those of you who cut the budget last year,” he said, explaining that only because parent-funded booster clubs stepped in this year, various activities — including theater and music — were able to receive the funds needed to continue with key programs like the school musical.
Resident and parent Michelle Martinez said she was in favor of the school budget in general, but expressed worry that the money is not necessarily being well-spent.
“I do think there’s still an opportunity for us to challenge the budget,” she said, encouraging “a different distribution of dollars.”
“I have noticed over the last several years a greater focus on assessments and testing of our children, versus truly creative approaches when it comes to education,” she said.
While she lauded the work of most Wilton teachers, she said some aren’t worth the money being spent on them.
“I would just encourage us to — before we consider accepting this budget — to really contemplate: Are we allocating the dollars appropriately within the budget and should we maybe contemplate other ways to be able to allocate those dollars?” she said.
One different area that a few members of the public commented on was the way the budget process has been conducted this year, and how it’s differed from the past couple of budget cycles.
Among those that remarked on how much more collaborative the Board of Education and Board of Finance have been this year as well as how transparent the BOF has been was David Tatkow, who would have been sitting at the table with the BOF if he had gained only four more votes in last November’s municipal election. Nonetheless, he had positive feedback, especially for BOF Chair Raimondi, who he said has not only been very responsive in several email exchanges, even those well after midnight, but who has provided considerable information on this year’s budget process.
“One of the things I brought up at some prior meetings was wanting to see more mathematical transparency into how the taxes were created, how the taxes are calculated, and also different scenarios. Different scenarios for different value, different size assessments within the town, seeing different bands. What I greatly appreciated in the communication was seeing how complicated it is and seeing how it’s not quite so simple to come up with exact numbers. So I very much value that that kind of communication,” Tatkow said.
This meeting really emphasizes what a colossal misstep this town took in the November elections. Instead of Ms. Sclafani, who likes the schools and wants us to spend more money on them, we elected a BOE member with horrific conflicts of interest who seems to have run for office primarily in order to carry out a bizarre revenge campaign against instructional coaching. And instead of Mr. Tatkow, we elected – by 4 votes – somebody who will cheerfully indulge Mr. Raimondi’s apparent burning desire to slash school budgets.
(Ms. Boucher is proving equally disastrous – and seems to be carrying out a bizarre revenge campaign of her own against the Wilton Volunteer Ambulance Corps – but the blame there probably belongs more to the DTC for not finding a credible candidate to run against her, rather than to voters, and at any rate, she did far more damage to Wilton’s long-term financial prospects as a state legislator than she stands to do now)
But ultimately the biggest problem is that we’ve been cutting more than we can afford to for years, and now the bill for all of that poor past fiscal management has come due. Spending as little as possible is not virtuous; responsible budgeting means spending enough to avoid creating larger problems for yourself later on, and both the BOF and several past iterations of the BOE have failed at that.
I’m particularly disappointed to see Mr. Dubin praising those years of lean budgets, when years of lean budgets are what got us into our current mess in the first place. I understand that as DTC chair he’s trying to chase all those moderate unaffiliated voters who like Republicans’ fiscal responsibility but are turned off by, well, everything else about Republicans, but it’s not a coincidence that lean budgets and malevolent bigotry occupy the same side of the political spectrum: a budget is a moral document, we spend money on the things we value, and when we consistently short-change our schools, it kind of suggests we don’t value them very much.