Communication problems with school district

WINSTED — The Board of Selectmen’s Finance Sub-committee met at Town Hall on Thursday, Jan. 15.

Present at the meeting were Mayor Candace Bouchard, Selectman Candy Perez, Town Manager Dale Martin, Finance Director Brenda Fox-Howard and interim Town Treasurer Cynthia Rines.

At the meeting, Howard issued concerns about the lack of communication she has had with the Winchester School District over financial matters and budgeting.

“I have tried at least three times to schedule a meeting with Superintendent of Schools Anne Watson and Interim Business Manager Hugo Pinzon so we can look at numbers,” Howard said.

“I know that I went over [budget numbers] starting in May and I’m pretty sure I’d sent them to their bookkeepers over [at the school district] on several occasions with no response,” Rines said. “Even at that time I said, ‘It looks like you guys are overspending on your budget the way you have this recorded but there’s probably something that maybe we misinterpreted. Tell us what we need to change.’ I’ve heard nothing from them.”

“On top of that layer, [Colleen Garrity from the Accounts Payable department] sends reconciliations, and they all end up in a pile,” Howard said. 

Both Fox and Rines said they are eager to meet with school district officials to discuss the budget for the current school year.

“They won’t give me a date to meet,” Howard said. “I’ve tried several times to meet with them.”

“We’ve tried to meet with them several times and they’ve canceled,” Martin said. “We finally said, ‘OK, you know what? Let them set a meeting date and we will drop everything we are doing to meet with them.’”

Both Perez and Bouchard said they are very concerned with the situation.

“I want to make it known that we are having troubles with them,” Perez said. “I just don’t want it to be back where we were before and people say ‘You didn’t take any action and you didn’t do the things you were supposed to do because you are the town’s Board of Finance and you are supposed to take care of all of these things.’”

“I think as a town we have taken the ball as far up as we can go,” Howard said.

“We know that there are issues with upcoming decisions that have to be made in other areas, compounding with this whole situation with special education,” Perez said. “I  can’t imagine that there will not be any financial implications coming out with that. The [school district] does not even have a line item budget that they can show us. They’re starting to put something together, but it’s not there yet. You can come to my school and pull out a budget book and you will see where every single line item is.”

Perez is the principal of Northwestern Regional District #7 Middle School.

The budget for the school year 2014-2015 is set at $19,958,149.

According to information provided by Pinzon at the Board of Education’s meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 13, the district has so far spent $9,439,123.

Pinzon forecasts that the school district will receive $1,063,464 in grants, giving the school district $21,021,613 for its budget.

Of that, Pinzon projects that the school district will spend $21,021,506 this year, leaving the district a balance of $107 by the end of the school year.

In his budget forecast, Pinzon lists several unplanned expenditures, including $1,022,946 in tuition fees, $336,076 in instruction fees, $206,052 in operation fees, $127,490 in special education fees, $121,064 in benefits and fixed charges, $32,965 in capital and technology fees and $27,822 in maintenance-of-plant charges.

At the Board of Selectmen’s meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 20, Howard said that she and Martin were scheduled to meet with school district officials about finances on Thursday, Jan. 22.