New Haven Independent

The plan under review may incorporate some aspects of a Board of Education proposal seeking cuts and some aspects of a union proposal, Anaclerio said in an interview. It is designed to help avert layoffs and a small property tax increase facing taxpayers. No dollar figures were released and Anaclerio declined to provide further details. One idea proposed by Frank Twohill, the Republican RTM minority leader, was to freeze teacher salary steps for one year. Any changes in the contract require membership approval.

Until now Anaclerio has been mum on what direction, if any, the union would take in the face of the economic recession and a public outcry over a contract that totals $23.6 million in its third year. The controversial contract was approved by the RTM in January. He was also waiting for the Board of Finance to act. It did last month.

“This is a year like no other year,” Anaclerio said, adding that his executive board is open to the idea of concessions. He unveiled the idea of possible givebacks at an RTM education committee meeting last week. Besides cutting salaries, the biggest cost to the town, the union could look at medical insurance but insurance cutbacks are legally complicated to achieve.

After the RTM committee meeting, Anaclerio said he met with the three other heads of school unions and with Frank Carrano, the chairman of the Board of Education. Carrano had his own plan, which Anaclerio said he later presented to his ten-member executive board.

“We did not take a vote. We discussed the plan, which revolved around salaries,” he said. The union board, which consists of tenured and non-tenured teachers, may incorporate some of Carrano’s plan and some of ours,” he told the Eagle. There appear to be different views on how to achieve the reduction goal.

One reason for uncertainty is the elusive numbers surrounding the goal. In part the figures depend upon how many teachers retire or how many teachers leave as a result of attrition. These numbers will influence how many teacher layoffs actually occur. Virtually the entire school budget is paid for by property taxes and an effort appears underway to understand this fact.

Anaclerio said he plans to meet with union members soon to try to get a realistic figure on retirements. So far four teachers have announced their intentions, but more could follow as the term winds down.The BEA represents 319 teachers at five public schools.

Anaclerio’s plan was developed in the aftermath of a Board of Education decision in February to inform 80 plus non-tenured teachers that they would be fired. With the exception of two members, Michael Krause and Peter Berdon, the majority of the board agreed to send out pink slips six weeks before they had to, causing widespread distress among teachers, parents and students. These concerns came through loud and clear at a Board of Finance budget hearing last month.

In the end, when the Board of Education reconfigured its budget, now at $47.3 million, there were still only the original 12.5 layoffs the schools superintendent began with, not the 80 it put forward. So far the Board of Finance’s final decision has not increased the 12.5 number because cuts could come from other places.

But if the RTM trims more, then more teachers might be affected. Anaclerio said his plan “spreads the burden across everyone — younger and older teachers” but he would not give details.

In February, after a public outcry over the hefty new contract, the Board of Education asked the teachers union along with the other unions, to reopen talks in order to try to get concessions. The Board deployed Carrano to talk to union leaders but his efforts did not get far because the union was waiting until the Board of Finance acted before deciding its next step.

The Board of Finance acted last month, cutting the Board of Education’s already trimmed budget by $250,000. More cuts might occur if the Republican members of the RTM present a strong enough case to Democrats to join them in paring back the current town budget by an additional $535,000.The $535,000 figure includes a $205,000 cut from the school budget.

There has been widespread public concern over the school budget, which makes up more than half of the town budget and over which Town Hall has no control. In December, despite the recession, the Board of Education approved a new teacher’s contract. The new contract gave teachers significant raises and retained longevity bonuses and extra pay for advising extra-curricular activities.

Next the RTM approved the contract, a move First Selectman Anthony “Unk” DaRos said he later deplored. But DaRos did not make his opinion known at the meeting before the RTM voted. The RTM has come under fire for its vote, but was faced with the problem of sending the contract to binding arbitration, a process the town in general tends to lose. In her state of the state address earlier this year, Governor M. Jodi Rell asked that binding arbitration be curtailed for at least two years.

Meanwhile, the Republican caucus of the RTM said it was determined to keep its promise not to raise the mill rate, the rate used to determine property taxes. If there are no further cuts at the RTM’s May 12 budget meeting than the mill rate will rise by just under one-half a mill.

Earlier this year the RTM Republicans voted unanimously to accept only “zero budget growth.”

“The caucus believes that there should be no budget growth in the 2009-10 budget. For the current fiscal year the Town budget is $88,401,229,” Twohill said in a press release. It has now risen to $88.9 million.

To get zero budget growth, the Republicans want to cut an additional $535,000 that the Board of Finance did not cut. It would take $300,000 from the new Aerial 1 fire truck sinking fund, $49,000 from school classroom “Smartboards,” $156,000 from the Board of Education budget and $30,000 from the First Selectman’s discretionary “consultant” fund. It is also asking for a wage freeze for all Town employees, unionized and non-unionized.

The Republican caucus would also consider reducing raises to Town employees. “Other area communities have been successful in getting givebacks from previously negotiated union contracts in order to save jobs. Non-unionized raises have also been trimmed.”

The caucus said First Selectman Anthony “Unk” DaRos, “has been completely silent on town union givebacks, claiming it showed a lack of leadership. DaRos did require town budgets to come in flat and they did. DaRos said the Board of Education was part of the town. But the Board of Education did not come in with a flat budget.

The Republicans would cut 1 percent from the expected 3 percent raises for unionized and non-unionized Town employees.

Twohill urged residents to call or write their RTM representative about the proposed budget. Their names may be found on the town’s website. # # #