Following on Peter's comment in a previous post, there will be a special meeting of the BoE.
BCCT, Saturday, December 29: "Notice is hereby given that the Borough of Morrisville School Directors will hold a Special Meeting on January 2, 2008 at 7:30PM at the Morrisville Middle Senior High School, 550 West Palmer Street, Morrisville PA.
The purpose of this meeting is to consider adopting a resolution promising to keep real estate tax increases under its designated percentage.
William Hellmann, President
Joseph Kemp, Secretary"
OK, you don't need to have a meeting for such a purpose -- there's nothing really to vote on here. So what's the underlying purpose? What's getting cut?
So what will they be discussing? Adopting a resolution to keep the tax increases under the 4.4% maximum inflation budget rise cap.
As arcane and convoluted as accounting is, governmental proceedings can be very confusing, especially to the layman. In the real world where you and I live, if you can only increase spending by a fixed maximum, that's where you start. Here in GovWorld, you set your spending and only then look to see if you have enough money. Then you proceed to cut expenses or tax your way to a balanced budget. The Feds do it all the time, so why can't the Morrisville Board of Education under the direction of William Hellmann, CPA?
So they are going to adopt a resolution to consider doing what they need to do as mandated by state law. Paging Gov Rendell: Pennsylvania state law is now optional in Morrisville. "Hi, officer. Yes, I saw that stop sign. Thank you for bringing that to my attention. In fact, I'm rushing to get home now to chair a family meeting where we are going to adopt a resolution calling upon all members of the family to consider recognizing stop signs and their function in everyday life. We will certainly keep you informed of our progress. I'm going to continue along now. Bye!" I'm betting the next thing we'll hear the driver say is, "Don't tase me, bro!"
In GovWorld, these resolutions are usually fig-leaf fluff to hide behind. "Well, we're following law 749-WKRP-8489.87 which states in section 4, paragraph 5 subsection 5c(E) that the following shall occur..." It's a responsibility avoidance tactic. The school board can always point to this resolution and say, "well, we HAVE to cut, because we're forced to by resolution blah-blah-blah." This is when Captain Algebra and the No Sports League can swoop in, dubiously claim the high moral ground, and then cut away meat and sinew instead of budgetary fat.
Let's look at the possible options here:
Responsible Budgeting: This one is already debunked and out of consideration. If there were hard budget choices to be made, they would already have made them, brought the budget in UNDER or AT the cap, and shown us the hard work of leadership. I don't think these one trick ponies know effective leadership, which sometimes means going AGAINST the people to do the right thing. Their mindless NSN stance is ample proof of this blind spot and character flaw.
Vox Populi: Hear the voice of the people! "Gee, we're really in a tough spot, do we cut algebra or history? You choose for us." And once this is done, then they can blissfully point out that they offered the voters the choice and that they are simply following the Will of the People, bearing no direct responsibility. This is sort of like how they snookered the borough council into being the bad guys who unanimously killed the school. "It was the council, not us! Burger, Panzitta, and Buckman did it." (Pick your council member as you will...it was all of them anyway.)
The Hair Shirt: BTW, the Yes, Minister series is a great place to see real government hypocrisy in action and keep the antics of elected officials in perspective. What this proposes is that when you need to do something politically suicidal, present it as the lesser of the two options. For example, we need to cut $1 million from the budget. Coincidentally, both the history department and the music budget are for $1m. Neither should be cut, so let's cut history. The outcry will be so vocal that we (silly us) will realize the error of our ways and (cheerfully?) cut music to save history. We all go home happy. Well, most of us who don't have kids in music, that is. Feel free to substitute football, soccer, chess, FBLA, for music as you see fit. Recognize the tactic and be prepared for it.
I'm giving you the warning now: This school board will go to great lengths to provide "Gee whiz, I didn't decide that" leadership deniability over leadership responsibility. They are scared to reveal the truth to their sycophants in the audience. If we let this occur, then we are just as guilty as they are.
Thoughts, comments?
Sunday, December 30, 2007
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11 comments:
All fine points, STS.
Another thing to ask, if they choose to cut programs, is how is that program funded? We get a tremendous amount of grants, etc, which pay for many, many of our programs. On the Preliminary Budget, real estate taxes are only 56% ($12.8M) of the total revenue ($23.0M), the rest comes from State, Federal and other sources -- in this case, "other" is the $1.25M transfer from the Capital Projects.
So cutting, say, after school programs could *appear* to be saving a lot of money but in the end would probably not reduce real estate taxes at all! It would indeed reduce costs but it would also decrease our grants.
And since many of our after school programs (non-sport) are funded by the 21st Century Grant, and as Mrs. Berry-Johnson explained, these funds CANNOT be used for anything else, maybe we can make algebra a club.
"...these funds CANNOT be used for anything else"
This is going to be true for just about any grant.
Here's the big problem, which we discussed at length at the December board meeting: If we sign this resolution, it will preclude us from APPLYING for any of the special education exceptions that school districts can use to go over the 4.4% set by the state. Applying for those exceptions doesn't mean we have to use them. We could still get the budget to 4.4% or even less (unlikely, very, but...). If, however, oil prices spike or we get an influx of special ed students, or some economic calamity occurs before we approve the final budget in June (when we'll have a MUCH better idea of what this stuff will cost next year), we will be stuck cutting the rest of the textbooks, teacher training and yes, arts and sports. We're actually pretty close to 4.4%, but we're looking at some fat cuts to get there. Signing this resolution would be foolish and incredibly short sighted.
joeyouknow...are things more topsy-turvy in GovWorld than I expected? Are you saying that considering passing this resolution to follow state law actually is a BAD thing, and you are recommending that the board take no action in this direction at present because it blocks responsible future reaction and manuevering inherent to any governmental activity? Is this an unintended consequence of a poorly worded law, or does this resolution shut off an avenue of maneuvering that it would be more wise to maintain?
This is very scary to me - so I contacted various media outlets. Manasee Wagh will be at tonight's meeting.
I shared my many concerns for our district with her today.
If they're so hell-bent on a resolution promising <4.4% increase, why did they pass the preliminary budget just a few weeks ago with a 6.something % increase? Shouldn't they have cut it back to <4.4% from the start?
To totally avoid personal responsibility, they should consider the referendum option. Let the people trash the budget at the ballot box, and voila!, the hands they are completely washed!
Moot point now. The resolution passed 5-3 with Bill Farrell voting Yes with reservations. Mr. Hellmann was asked to name some of the places in the budget that he'd cut, he mentioned this recent article in the newspaper: http://www.mcall.com/news/nationworld/state/all-a11_pensions.6197449dec23,0,523263.story
Hope the link works.
Read it carefully.
Nah, just read it.
Also, in repsonse to savetheschool (salutations and thanks, sir), the answer would be, "Yup." Probably to all parts.
I stand corrected, there WAS something to vote on tonight and it was exactly what the ad said it was -- to pass (5:3 for those keeping score) a motion not to exceed the 4.4%.
As joeyouknow stated, this was short-sighted. It was an unnecessary display of hubris, of kicking ass and taking names. Or, in Bill Hellmann CPA's words, they were "sending a message to the administrators." Super. They could have achieved the same thing -- cut until they achieved their goal of <4.4% -- and come out looking like heroes (to some), while leaving open the options if they needed them. But what they accomplished tonight was closing the door on using those state exceptions if they needed it. But, IMHO, this was as much about revenge as it was about fiscal responsibility.
Now, if we find ourselves in a bind (which the proposed cuts very well may lead to), we will have nowhere to turn other than cutting bone. That is, we may have to cut some of the very generous FIVE text books each class is being budgeted (Note to the Board: it is illegal to copy copyrighted materials without permission, even under the premise that we couldn't afford to buy enough textbooks).
This is NOT my definition of fiscal responsibility.
Kudos to Joe Kemp, Ed Frankenfield and Robin Reithmeyer for being practical, reasonable, and open-minded on the issue. We understand that a budget is just that. Just because you budget a certain amount doesn't mean you HAVE to spend that amount. And keeping your options open doesn't necessarily equate to going over budget.
I'm giving one thumb up to Bill Farrell for listening, being reasonable, and trying to convince Hellmann and gang to not go forward with the resolution. Simultaneously he gets one thumb down for sticking with the party line even though he knew it was a mistake.
I'm giving 0 out of 5 textbooks to Marlys Mihok for keeping her stipend so she can "decide for herself who to donate it to." You ran for the Board because you care about the students, remember? I think the worthy cause it pretty obvious. Oh, that's right, this has nothing to do with education... I forgot.
Here's a re-post of the link joeyouknow mentioned.
http://www.mcall.com/news/nationworld/state/all-a11_
pensions.6197449dec23,0,523263.story
The last part of the link keeps getting cut off.
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