Budgets of their times

This budget year has been for Connecticut, across the board, extremely difficult, with a plethora of thorny problems and no easy solutions. The state deficit of $3.5 billion for the 2012 fiscal year starting July 1 has been partially mitigated by the budget now ready to go on for approval by the tax and budget committees, and the House and Senate, in Hartford. However, there are still the pesky $2 billion in concessions spread out over two years yet to be realized that Gov. Dannel Malloy expects to wrench out of state employee unions. These concessions are critical in the plan to bring the state back to fiscal balance. Many are skeptical about the prospects for success with this plan since it depends upon the voluntary cooperation of the state’s employees. On the local level, towns in the Northwest Corner have either reduced spending, as in North Canaan, kept the spending flat, as in Falls Village, or kept increases in their municipal budgets reasonable. The Region One school budgets, however, for the individual elementary schools have been more challenging. Falls Village, for instance, has had to find a way to fill in an addition of about $340,000 in fees to send their students to Housatonic Valley Regional High School. That’s a lot of money for a small town to drum up, whether the expenses were expected or unexpected. Salisbury Central School’s board found additional expenses of almost $60,000 just before its last public hearing, bringing the school’s budgetary annual increase to 3.81 percent. Even so, some Salisbury Central parents are hoping to improve the student/teacher ratio before their budget is done. The Region One School District budget for 2011-12, which covers the costs of the high school, Pupil Services and the Regional School Services Center, is proposed for vote on May 3 in the amount of $14,679,097. This is an increase of 1.96 percent over the current budget. It can be understood by regional voters that there may be unavoidable increases in some costs of operating the district, such as those for heating oil and insurance, not to mention automatic increases in salaries defined by teachers’ contracts. However, the step the Region One School Board took to extend administrator contracts and include pay raises has created some controversy, especially in the wake of a year of transition in the high school’s leadership. In a tough budget year, too, it is hard to consider increases, however modest, when so few in the general taxpaying public have been the beneficiaries of them.The argument can be made that it’s to the benefit of the district to give the administration a vote of confidence after a year of upheaval, to give them some measure of support and the motivation to stick around and work to improve the education of the students in Region One. But isn’t that what they’ve been paid to do already? It would seem the feelings of taxpayers and voters in Region One should have been considered just as carefully as those of the administrators before such action was taken. So, it’s an imperfect budgetary year, but what year isn’t? All budgets reflect their times, both morally and politically, and this year is no exception. With taxes increasing and services diminishing as a result of the compromises made on many of the budgets, it is critical that residents make their voices heard this year, whether at open meetings on the town budgets or through the Region One School District referendum. Get out and vote on May 3.