Town budget goes with it

SHARON —Taxpayers shot down the proposed budget for fiscal 2009-10 at the end of a two and-a-half hour town meeting on Friday, May 8, at Town Hall.

Selectman John Mathews, who voted against the budget at a selectman’s meeting in March, made a motion at the meeting for the budget vote to be split, with one vote for the municipal budget  and another for the education budget. He also made a motion for the budget to be voted on in the paper vote form known as an Australian ballot.

There was a debate over the salary increases proposed for Sharon Center School, including a proposed 4-percent raise for principal and a 3.5-percent raise for non-certified staff members (that is, for non-teaching positions at the school).

Certified staff members received an average 5.8-percent; these salary increases, however, are contractual and were negotiated and agreed to last spring. They can not be changed.

Region One School District Superintendent Patricia Chamberlain, a Sharon resident, was the first person to speak, and introduced herself as “a taxpayer.�

“This is my twenty-first budget vote in Sharon, and in my time the vote has always been one united front,� Chamberlain said. “This is one of the best budgets presented to this town. If it was up 6, 4 or 5 percent, I wouldn’t be saying this right now. If [residents] are upset that town employees are getting a lower raise than school [employees], people should know that the town has a different system for giving their employees a raise.�

“If the town employees are unhappy or resentful of another employee group, there are remedies for that outside of this room,� Chamberlain said. “And the remedies are through the state labor board and through the ASCME [Association of State, County and Municipal Employees] non-certified union. Clearly [any criticisms] should go to the selectmen and I would ask you to ask them to create an evaluation system that is fair.�

Tom Casey, on the other hand, encouraged residents to approve the plan of splitting the vote (some but not all towns in the region vote on separate education and municipal budgets).

The reason he would like to see the vote split “is because of the sheer arrogance of the BOE in representing this budget,� Casey said.

“We have had several administrators [in the region] who have requested for no [line] increases,� he continued. Chamberlain would not accept a salary increase for the coming year, for example. “Why is that? Because of the economic climate we are in. There is a contradiction right there.

“Most people right now are thankful to have a job and that’s how employers are treating their employees, by saying we value you because you still have a job. We can’t necessarily give you the raises you are entitled to, but the fact you still have a job shows that we value you. That is not what the Board of Education is doing.�

Board of Education Chairman Electra Tortorella said the board takes into consideration the salaries and raises given to school employees in surrounding towns as well as the town’s economic condition when determining raises and salaries.

“We don’t compare the selectman’s salary to the principal’s salary, we compare like jobs to like jobs,� Tortorella said. “We look at what other principals are making in the area and they are in the three to four percent [raise] realm. The negotiated union contracts are within two to four percent, so we feel we are in the ballpark. We don’t feel that we are arrogant.�

Alex Hunter had strong words for Tortorella in response.

“The school budget is a large portion of the town’s budget,� Hunter said. “What I would like to ask the school is, who do you think you’re going to be teaching if all the families in town leave because of high taxes? If the taxes in this town get any higher, you’re going to be losing all the students. This is not the time for raises that are off the charts.�

Casey’s and Hunter’s comments were applauded by the audience.

Eventually, residents at the meeting approved Mathews’ motion by a hand vote of 73 to 40.

The meeting then went into recess as residents came up to a ballot box and voted separately on the proposed town budget and the education budget. It took approximately 45 minutes.

The results were announced at the end of the meeting, at 10:30 p.m., with the town budget passing by a vote of 80 to 36 and the school budget failing by a vote of 45 to 75.

Town Attorney Judith Dixon said because one budget failed to pass, the budget fails as a whole.

The school budget will now be re-examined by the Board of Education. First Selectman Malcolm Brown said, since voters approved the town side of the budget, that no alterations would be needed there.

The date of the next budget vote has not yet been set but Dixon advised it should be held before the beginning of the new fiscal year, which is July 1.