Don't forget that tonight is the regular monthly school board meeting. The proposed budget was approved unanimously as a working document. What work has been done on it, or has it even changed? There's only one way to find out. Be there. Meeting starts at 7:30 P.M. in the LGI.
This budget has an impact down the road. The proposed millage is 187.3, which represents quite a drop. The savings are almost completely from the costs of the now defeased bond being removed.
There's the special education costs to consider as well. This is an unfunded mandate. We have to provide these services by law, but the money to provide them comes from homeowners. Cutting them is not an option. We need to secure funding elsewhere.
Using the 4.4% cap currently in place, the most that the budget can be next year is 195.5 mills unless exceptions are applied for. You think things are tight now? Watch the 2009-2010 budget process.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
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8 comments:
Any news from last nite's Community Action Group mtg.? I couldn't make it.
At the Community Action meeting there were discussions about the buildings and tuitioning out high school students. Also questions about the state of the heaters in the elementary schools which will be called on to belch out at least one more year of "heat." No one wants to see K-12 in the high school without major renovations. We'd all like to see what is legal, possible and advantageous regarding closing, building, renovating, tuitions, mergers, etc.
Is this group just a phoney-baloney smokescreen to say that the community was consulted whilst Hellmann & his hard core allies do what they want to do? Because it sure seems that way. Which board members were there - B. Worob, Heater, & Buckman like last time?
To Sharon Hughes,
You are symantically correct: I will stop calling it "cutting" the special education, alternative school, and charter school budgets. As you point out, they are just not going up as much as the administration says is required. From hereon out I will refer to it as "underfunding."
Ok Peter, and for how many more years do you believe we can afford to PROPERLY fund mandates with double digit annual increases. Sooner or later, something has to give.
You're right, anonymous. And if we could somehow get local control over the double-digit-escalating health-care costs & prescription drug benefits for seniors, we'd sure as hell want to starve that beast and make people beg for basic medical care & medicine, right?
And it's someone else's fault fuel, food, and basic necessities prices are all skyrocketing too. Why doesn't SOMEBODY do something about this? I mean we elect them to handle this, so handle it and fix it for us.
Wait for it....
Wait for it...
Wait for it..
Before I respond, Anonymous, let's start with the definition of mandate:
Main Entry: man·date
Pronunciation: \ˈman-ˌdāt\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle French & Latin; Middle French mandat, from Latin mandatum, from neuter of mandatus, past participle of mandare to entrust, enjoin, probably irregular from manus hand + -dere to put — more at manual, do
Date: 1501
1: an authoritative command; especially : a formal order from a superior court or official to an inferior one
2: an authorization to act given to a representative (accepted the mandate of the people)
3 a: an order or commission granted by the League of Nations to a member nation for the establishment of a responsible government over a former German colony or other conquered territory b: a mandated territory
OK, with that out of the way, lets look at this two ways, financial and moral.
FINANCIAL
Financially, this town is at odds on how to improve things. There are the progressives (how I would classify most the of contributors to this blog, myself included) and the depressives (how I would classify the Board and Council majorities. A.K.A. NSN's on this blog). The progressives believe that by improving the town now, which, yes, does cost some money up front, we will save, even collect dividends, in the future. It is an ibnvestment for the future. That is the core of why most of us believed in a new school. A motto for this group might be, a stitch in time saves nine.
The depressives on the other hand believe that we need to keep taxes down at all costs. A motto on for this group might be, a penny saved is a penny earned.
I don't think we'll ever see eye-to-eye. These are deep, philosophical differences that are hard to overcome.
Now, financially, to answer your question, "how many more years do you believe we can afford to PROPERLY fund mandates with double digit annual increases?" I can't answer this for anyone other than for my family, however, I challenge the notion of double-digit increases. The state mandates (there's that word again) a max increase. Oh, but what about the exceptions, you ask. Yes, there are exceptions for things outside of our control, such as increased costs of special needs kids. Which leads to...
MORAL
We have a moral obligation to our community to educate our kids. It is our civic duty. At what costs? Well, at whatever the cost is to give our kids an appropriate education, to give them a chance at a future. This is a tenet of the progressives. Notice I am not asking for gold covered text books and marble-floored buildings. Yes, I think a new school was going to help build our community AND save money, but we never asked for a Taj Majal, no matter how you may have tried to spin it, Anonymous. Now, at this point, we are hoping to just keep our failing buildings and simply educate the kids, and so far it's not looking too promising that even that will happen.
I will say it again. We have a moral obligation to educate our kids. The current budget underfunds this mission, even at the pleas of the community and the real professionals, the administration.
So, you say, "Sooner or later, something has to give." Given the current budget, and Dr. Yonson's statement the other night that they will somehow figure out a way to appropriately deal with special education, etc, that means that, yes, something has to give. Sadly it will be education. Education will have to give and our kids will lose. We will give our kids a second rate education because YOU want lower goddamn taxes!
We have a moral obligation to our community to educate our kids.
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