Melissa Bailey Photo
Harp & Harries Monday night.
Mayor Toni Harp rejected a new school spending plan as soon as it was proposed, arguing city taxpayers cannot afford to spend an extra $5.3 million a year on education.
Her comment came after Monday night’s school board meeting at Hill Regional Career High School, where officials gave a first sneak peek at the proposed FY 2014 – 15 school budget.
Schools Superintendent Garth Harries, who Monday won a renewal of his contract for another three years, presented an overview of a $396,524,351 total spending plan for the fiscal year beginning July 1. The overall package, which includes medical benefits, debt service, pensions and workers compensation, and various revenue sources, represents a $4.5 million, 1 percent increase over last year.
Discussion focused on the portion that’s likely to get the most attention in the upcoming budget season: the so-called “general fund,” or operating budget, which is paid for by city and state tax dollars.
Harries proposes increasing that operating budget to $186 million, an increase of $8.8 million, or 4.9 percent.
He announced good news: The state is expected to kick in an extra $3.3 million in Education Cost Sharing money, the main vehicle by which the state pays for schools. The schools currently get $142.5 million in ECS money. The extra money matches the amount of the structural deficit the schools have been facing for the past few years.
He also unveiled his big ask.
“We want to do more for our students, not less,” he said. “That would require another $5.3 million.”
He said he’s requesting an extra $5.3 million from city taxpayers, boosting the city taxpayer contribution by 2.9 percent, to $23.6 million. But he said he is also working with Harp to consider the “overall picture” of the city’s finances.
Harp replied that the city can’t afford the request.
“I know that people really care about education,” she said. “I do, too. But people also care about not raising property taxes in this town.”
Harp, who was attending her third school board meeting, launched into a critique of the way the board handles school finances.
“This board needs to take a little bit more authority in terms of oversight of this budget,” she said. The board “needs to understand that while the city can help, we also have state partners and federal partners. If there isn’t enough on the state side, then somebody needs to be up there rattling that cage!”
“We’ve got to look to our partners in the federal government, to our partners in the state government, our partner with Yale University” to help, not ask city taxpayers for more money, she argued.
“We’ve got to make sure that we’re a lean, green, tough education machine,” she said.
She made the declaration in a firm but not confrontational way, drawing friendly chuckles.
She previously publicly criticized Harries for not giving budget updates at board meetings. (He has done so more often than his predecessor, but he didn’t do so in the first two meetings Harp attended.)
She urged her fellow board members to take a more active role on the budget. “I know it’s not what has typically occurred here,” she said. But “the people of this town are calling on us to be a little bit more interested in what is going on, and to have a little more oversight.”
Mayor Harp was later asked if she would support a schools budget that included a $5.3 million increase in city contribution.
“We don’t have the money,” she replied. “It’s not something we can do.”
“I don’t want to raise taxes,” she continued. “I think I would not vote for it” in its current form.
She called the budget proposal unveiled Monday “a starting point for discussion,” not a final draft.
Most of the increase in cost comes to pay people’s salaries, Harries said.
In years past, as the Board of Alders flat-funded the school system, the school district got into the habit of separating out a line item called the “budget initiative” highlighting just how much it would have to cut to make ends meet. The “budget initiative” amounted to a hole in the budget. It didn’t always get filled by the end of the year.
This year, the school district started out with a $9 million “budget initiative,” or deficit. He announced the school district has reduced that deficit from $3.5 million in December to $2.4 million as of Jan. 31.
The school system this year stopped the practice of including a “budget initiative” in its proposal, Harries said.
The school district recently created a new position called chief financial officer. The person in that post would be in charge of the budget. Harries recently said he is reviewing 10 applications for that job.
Meanwhile, schools Chief Operating Officer Will Clark (pictured) has been handling the schools budget in addition to negotiating labor contracts, settling lawsuits, running school facilities and overseeing school construction, among other duties.
Clark said the school district worked hard to close budget gaps each year as costs rose amid flat-funding. A labor deal that privatized one third of the custodial workforce continues to save lots of money, he said. And the district won a competitive federal grant that will help pay for teachers’ and principals’ salaries, he noted.
“It’s not just, ‘Hey, give us more money,’” Clark said in a budget briefing before the school board.
“We’re still doing the lion’s share of the work” in cutting costs and finding extra revenue. “We’re asking for a modest increase from the city, and a modest increase from the state.”
Thanks Toni.