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School Committee Meeting, 03/09/10

Mar 9th, 2010 by Justin_Katz

Sparsely attended school committee meeting, tonight. The only thing that has inspired note is the announcement of a retiring teacher. The notable thing is how young he looks.

That’s wonderful, by the way. I wish I’d found a career path that headed in that direction when I was young enough to take it. (As it is, I’m still searching.)

Of course, I’d disappoint my detractors were I to fail to mention that teachers shouldn’t take such benefits for granted. Most of us have heard the common understanding that public-sector jobs once paid under market value, so government bodies compensated with benefits and security. Now, especially in Rhode Island, it’s no longer a balance, but a tipping scale.

7:33 p.m.

Superintendent Bill Rearick is explaining the state’s newly proposed funding formula. As you might imagine, Mr. Rearick is not happy with it, but as I’ve already said, Tiverton should have expected to be among the districts that lost money.

Director of Administration and Finance Doug Fiore is explaining, however, that the state aid for next year looks likely to be calculated based on the current budget with stimulus funds included. Because the district had been predicting a 5% cut based on the budget without the stimulus, the district’s proposed budget is now only $500,000 over the tax cap.

7:58 p.m.

Nothing was resolved. Everybody wants more money, obviously. Some discussion of the fact that the news is relatively good, compared with expected cuts, but will seem less good in subsequent years.

Also, as I was typing, Supt. Rearick made an announcement that one of the unions (the town’s Council 94 local) agreed to reopen its contract because of the difficult economic times.

8:06 p.m.

And they’re done.

Posted in School Committee, Tiverton | No Comments »

Town Council Meeting, 03/08/10

Mar 8th, 2010 by Justin_Katz

It looks like a long agenda for the town council (PDF), this evening, and I know that at least 40% of the audience is here specifically for the council’s consideration of solicitor Andrew Teitz’s proposed policy for making it as easy as possible to raise property taxes beyond the state cap (currently 4.5%). I’ll be staying for the whole thing, and the video will be just as available as if that topic were the first up.

One notable action taken was to respond in the affirmative to a letter from former council member Brian Medeiros requesting that the administrator publish the effect on services of various budgetary scenarios. Council Member Jay Lambert made the point that the council doesn’t really have that information. I’d suggest further that it’s likely that government officials might be selective in what consequences they’d include, because the possibilities are endless. (Cut this much from that; this much from that; all of that; etc.)

Treasurer Phil DiMattia just announced that the previously apparent loss of money in the landfill investment account turned out to have been an error. The money is there and “invested wisely.”

7:28 p.m.

By the way, I offer this merely as a general observation. During the Pledge of Allegiance, Council Member Louise Durfee declines to say, “under God.” She’s perfectly within her rights to do so, but I’ve never actually observed anybody exercising that right. (Incidentally, I only noticed because she stands right next to the flag and, not per my usual habits, I’m sitting perpendicular to her and the flag.)

7:53 p.m.

The agenda’s actually moving along quite rapidly. Maybe I’ll get home by bedtime, after all.

8:30 p.m.

Go, Hannibal Costa! Fire Chief Robert Lloyd is requesting adoption of a resolution to establish a “national incident management system.” The catch is that it comes from the federal government with a threat to withhold funding if the town doesn’t follow its orders. Sayeth Hannibal: “I see swastikas all over this thing.” His point is that the feds want to insist on things, but it doesn’t sound good (“like a dictatorship”), so they request an action and threaten the withholding of money. “What country is this?”

I’ve got to say that, on this matter, Hannibal’s is precisely the attitude that we need to permeate town and state governments across the country if the nation is going to pull back from the brink. Back to Hannibal: “This is the way Hitler took over Germany.”

8:34 p.m.

Teitz is up. First thing I notice is that he’s reading the policy this time, whereas in January he simply stated that he was putting forward a proposal for General Assembly action, clearly knowing it was going away.

Jay Lambert is responding, clearly wanting changes to the policy. (See my previous post for details.)

8:38 p.m.

He’s stressing that subsection (d) forbids the town from exceeding the cap unless one of four circumstances applies, the town notifies the state, and the state acknowledges that the circumstances apply. It is section (e) that creates the issue, and Jay’s arguing that it requires a 4/5 town council vote in addition to a majority of the electors at the financial town meeting.

8:44 p.m.

Jay has continued: Subsections (d) and (e) do not allow a taxpayer to raise taxes above the cap for the first time at the FTM. As a town, at the FTM, we do not have authority to violate the cap in such a way as to ignore the rest of the statute. Otherwise, it means “in effect, there is no tax cap for the town of Tiverton.”

Now, he’s offering a counter-proposal that would adopt his interpretation as a policy.

8:47 p.m.

Louise Durfee is responding. Dissembling. She said, essentially as Lambert did, that nobody disputes the applicability of (d). Already, it seems as if Teitz has done a horrible job of acknowledging the law as everybody in the room apparently understands it.

Durfee has now returned to describing everybody in the room during a conference at the time that the tax cap legislation passed. This is entirely immaterial, because the law as written, after all of the debate and rewriting in the legislature, represents the consensus will of the legislature, not any legislator’s interpretation.

8:55 p.m.

She makes the further argument that the town charter doesn’t permit the town council to presume to allow (or not) the financial town meeting to take particular actions. But if the state law encumbers the FTM according to subsection (d), it can clearly require the FTM to follow the town council in the series of approvals required to exceed the cap.

In response to a question from Council Member Cecil Leonard, Teitz rattled off a bizarre interpretation that the “also” in subsection (e) applies to subsection (d). With this guy “interpreting” the law for the council, the law has no meaning.

9:04 p.m.

Council President Don Bollin is making various points regarding the difficulty that following the law will present as a practical matter at the FTM. Specifically, he argued that a motion to increase the school budget could require the municipal budget to be reduced then and there. Well, yeah. That would be an argument that the town council should make before the vote to increase the school side is taken. That the law is inconvenient does not invalidate it.

9:18 p.m.

And on and on they go. It’s frustrating to watch people expend so much energy trying to explain that words don’t mean what they say because they want the law to be something that it is not.

9:22 p.m.

Been having technical difficulties. Budget Committee Chairman Jeff Caron is arguing that the council must approve by 4/5 and the FTM must approve by a majority. He’s also introducing the possibility that the FTM might increase taxes while most voters were unaware even of the the possibility of double-digit increases.

Budget Committee Vice Chair (and lawyer) Rob Coulter is now reviewing specific technical matters of the law.

9:29 p.m.

Council Vice Chair Joanne Arruda is stating that “the simplest spirit of that law” is that the “governing body” is the FTM. Why then the “also”? It also requires the statute to mean different things by “governing body” in different places.

9:39 p.m.

Boy, this is a long meeting. I charged my camera fully before coming and just had to plug it in. Missed some of the action, but it’s the same thing ongoing. One side explaining what the law clearly says, and the other claiming that it doesn’t matter for one reason or other.

9:57 p.m.

Still going. The council is trying to figure out how to proceed from here.

I can’t help but think of the school committee’s decision simply to ignore last year’s FTM requirement that it return town money if additional funds came from the state or federal governments. What we’re witnessing, here, is an attempt to insist on an unlawful policy when there are people in the room objecting.

10:06 p.m.

I’m not typing because I’m flabbergasted. The council is trying to get Teitz to redraft the policy, and Durfee now suggests that the council ought to have to vote by majority to send a levy on the budget committee after the state approves exceeding the cap. Where that comes from, in the law, I have no idea. Again… backfilling to make the law do what it does not do.

10:11 p.m.

It looks like they’re going to approve having Teitz redraft the policy with some minor adjustments, including specifying that subsection (d) applies to the financial town meeting, but not, apparently, (e). Where does that come from?

11:02 p.m. (from home)

They actually asked Teitz to tackle the initial provisions that get the policy up to the state’s approval of the excess levy, with the plan to take up the rest later.

Posted in FTM, Tiverton, Town Council, Town Treasurer | No Comments »

If At First They Don’t Succeed (At Twisting the Law), They’ll Try, Try Again

Mar 8th, 2010 by Justin_Katz

The January 25 meeting of the Town Council saw a bit of controversy over interpretation of the language in state law that places a cap on local property tax increases. As I explained beforehand, there were two interpretations on the table:

  • Bad (and spun): That regardless of what any other any other governing body has done, the financial town meeting has the authority to exceed the cap with a simple majority.
  • Good (and accurate): That the town council must vote, by a four-fifths majority, to request the state’s necessary authorization of the increase and the financial town meeting must approve with a majority.

To the surprise of every TCC supporter in the room, Council Member Louise Durfee led the way in suggesting that the town adopt the second interpretation as policy. Here’s my liveblog from the meeting, and here’s the video:

The meeting ended with a request that Town Solicitor Andrew Teitz draft language for the policy and submit it for public viewing ten days before tonight’s town council meeting. Well, not only did Teitz miss that deadline by several days, but here’s the third component of the policy that he’s putting forward (PDF):

Notwithstanding anything herein to the contrary, nothing in this policy shall be deemed to impair the authority of the Financial Town Meeting to exceed the cap set forth in the Act, under Article XIII (Home Rule) of the Rhode Island Constitution, or Chapter 3 (Town Meetings) of Title 45 of the General Laws of Rhode Island.

In short, the policy requires the town council to vote by four-fifths if it wishes to exceed the cap, but whether it does so, or whether the state authorizes the increase, is entirely immaterial, because the financial town meeting needn’t heed the explicit instruction of the law. In terms of the two options above, the council faked “good,” and Teitz went “bad.”

As we all witnessed two years ago, at the financial town meeting, at least some of the people who run this town will do anything to ram through their preferred policies, generally making it easier for them to take and spend your money however they like. During the last election cycle, TCC managed to replace some of that cabal. The next step will be keeping their machinations from increasing taxes more than the 4.5% allowed by state law, as we did last year. And the step after that will be replacing the rest of the bad lot.

Posted in Taxes, Town Council | No Comments »

Negotiations Go into the Dark Room

Mar 7th, 2010 by Justin_Katz

From the Newport Daily News:

The School Committee and the National Education Association-Tiverton had a mediation session Thursday and set dates for three more this month, but any details of what transpires will be kept under wraps until the two sides come to a contract agreement with the 191-member union or reach an impasse.

“We agreed that as long as there is progress being made we will not make any statements,” School Committee Chairman Jan Bergandy said. “If an agreement is reached or if there is an impasse, then both sides are welcome to say what happened.” …

“Basically there’s a temporary blackout,” Bergandy said of the halt to postings on the School Department Web site during this mediation period.

It’s the way of the world, I guess, that promises about continual flows of information are always contingent upon nothing really delicate being included. Officials tend to look at such provision of documents more as a tool for their own use than a service to taxpayers.

The real unfairness lies in the imbalanced rights provided to union membership, as I described in a video blog, back in September (fast forward to 3:10 for a description of the process):

Essentially, the complaint is that the full union membership gets to vote on the contract and, as reporter Marcia Pobzeznik put it in the quotation above, “come to a contract agreement,” before the taxpaying electorate is brought into the fold. Especially with an unpredictable financial town meeting rapidly approaching, the impression of planning against voters is a real danger. The school committee meetings at which town residents finally have the opportunity to opine on the contract always have the feeling of futility — with the committee merely allowing townsfolk to let off some steam before voting as they’d agreed during mediation and discussed during executive session.

We all know what comes next: Rhode Islanders, generally, and Tivertonians, in particular, are certainly familiar with the argument that contract terms are “locked in” and unavailable for change should voters determine that they need their money more than the town should.

Posted in School Committee, Unions | No Comments »

To Ignore or Not to Ignore

Mar 6th, 2010 by Justin_Katz

It’s a perpetual question, in political circles, whether one ignores the doings of the opposition or addresses them. The conundrum is that acknowledging them in their good works and bad brings them more attention for both. Frankly, the calculation usually has more to do with leverage; the side with a bigger audience ignores the side with the smaller one.

Personally, I’ve never been an adherent to that policy. If somebody is doing and saying things worth addressing, then address them. If it’s clearly useless to do so, then don’t.

So, I’m hopeful that former town council member Brian Medeiros’s new CURB-Tiverton blog will cease to be a venue for the vitriolic anti-TCC rhetoric with which it began and become a resource for people who simply disagree with us. Given the sorts of statements being made in comment sections, via email and snailmail, and even from the podiums of town meetings, I fear that meanness is a constituent component of their strategy. Sadly, folks who’ve been involved in politics and governance for a long time seem to adopt an ends-justify-the-means philosophy and see mudslinging as just the way the game is played.

We disagree.

Posted in Tiverton | No Comments »

**PRESS RELEASE** TOWN COUNCIL TO CONSIDER TAX CAP POLICY THIS COMING MONDAY

Mar 5th, 2010 by DavidN

Back in January, the Town Council agreed to adopt a policy clarifying its role as the governing body for purposes of supermajority protections against exceeding the property tax cap provided by state law. While the initial proposal was to change state law to remove this protection altogether, the Town Council ultimately settled upon a course where they would be held accountable with a supermajority vote before attempting to break the tax cap.  TCC applauded the Town Council for agreeing to this course, and we now encourage them to see it through. 

This is an important step forward for taxpayer rights and we encourage concerned citizens to attend the Town Council meeting 7PM, Monday, March 8th .  to voice their continued support for a policy and ordinance which confirms the taxpayer protection provided by state law.  Breaking the tax cap is and should be an extraordinary event, and TCC supports following state law to require a supermajority vote by our town council before trying to do so.

Because the current budget proposals by the town council and school committee would require a tax increase of approximately 12% for the coming year, this issue could have immediate relevance to the upcoming financial town meeting.

Here is a link to the Tiverton Tax Cap Policy developed by the Town’s lawyer Andy Teitz : Tiverton Cap Policy Draft 03052010

Posted in FTM, Press Releases, Taxes, Tiverton, Town Council | No Comments »

The Moderator’s Independence Should Be Maintained

Mar 5th, 2010 by DavidN

By Rob Coulter 

I took it as a kind compliment from Mr. Michael Smith that he would trust my advice on procedural matters at the upcoming Financial Town Meeting, as reported recently in the Sakonnet Times. 

My opinion, however, and for whatever it’s worth, is that the Moderator has an independent role and, as such, should have his own independent counsel.  I have consistently maintained this position with the Budget Committee, the Town Clerk, the Town Solicitor, and indeed, Mr. Smith himself.  Last year, I also objected to the Town Council’s appointment of Mr. Mike Burk because of his repeatedly demonstrated seething bias against the Tiverton Citizens for Change, which I believe risked compromising his ability to impartially serve as Moderator.

I do not believe the Town Solicitor can properly fill this role, because the Town Solicitor serves by Town Charter at the pleasure of the Town Council.  What’s more, the current Solicitor has outright defied the State’s interpretation of a critical state law involving the tax cap which is a key factor in financial town meetings.  Much like the School Committee has its own counsel, so too should the Moderator. 

We all remember the 2008 financial town meeting which was, to put it nicely, fraught with irregularities.  2009 was far better, to Mr. Burk’s credit, but still had at least one crucial incorrect procedural ruling.  Whatever outcome is reached regarding the levels of taxing and spending in Tiverton, in my opinion it is secondary to restoring confidence in the process itself.  For this reason, I continue to recommend that the Moderator – as independent, elected official – retain his own independent counselor to advise him at the Financial Town Meeting. 

While I am grateful for his confidence and am interested in working together to improve the process and help people wrestle with complicated Roberts Rules of Order, I cannot serve in any type of formal role to Mr. Smith because I intend to fulfill my Budget Committee responsibilities and fully participate as an Elector (i.e. voting resident taxpayer).  I may propose or object to Moderator rulings just like others and I did last year (such as where the Moderator and Town Solicitor both agreed an initial ruling was incorrect), but I stand in the same shoes as any other Elector.  For these reasons, I continue to encourage the Moderator to retain his own independent parliamentarian to help him navigate the rough waters of the Tiverton Financial Town Meeting so that we can continue restoring confidence in the process after the damage done in 2008.  Anyone interested in discussing these thoughts, or any other town matter, with me further is encouraged to call me at (401) 525-0469.  Thank you.

Posted in Tiverton | No Comments »

Hearing on Closing the High School: Video

Mar 5th, 2010 by Justin_Katz

It takes a little bit of time, but it’s an edifying experience to review the first School Committee meeting after last year’s FTM and then watch the video from the committee’s recent hearing about closing the high school. A theme emerged last year, solidified in this instruction from guidance counselor and unionist Lynn Nicholas:

You need to be serious about what you plan on cutting. I am the last person on this Earth that would want to hurt a child, but you need to make a statement. I don’t know how you’re going to do it. I don’t know what you’re going to do. But you need to make a statement to get people to the town meeting.

Soon after, Superintendent Bill Rearick told the Sakonnet Times that “our kids are going to be hurt.” Having attended both meetings, I can tell you that, if you placed them side by side, as movie editors often do to draw themes from their stories, you would see the February 25, 2010, meeting — with its many calls from the committee and administrators for residents to show up at the financial town meeting and vote for a large increase — as a direct response to the open-air strategizing that I witnessed last May.

On to the present (which I liveblogged on Anchor Rising); here are the opening remarks of the School Committee and Superintendent Rearick:

In the second half of this clip, Deborah Pallasch reads the Democratic Town Committee’s statement:

Townie Mike Carreiro suggests that, rather than eliminating the high school, residents should address the “cancer on our community,” by which he means the retiree population of the town. Then TCC President Dave Nelson explains the group’s belief that no services should be cut and that the committee should be wary of taxpayer angst. At 6:56 in the clip, an outburst from Deb Pallasch instructed Dave as to which direction he could turn his head while speaking. Hey, it’s their town; we just metastasize in it.

Resident Kelly Levesque raises the interesting prospect of bringing Little Compton students into our high school as a source of revenue, followed by another resident whose name I didn’t catch suggesting better maintenance of the buildings. One could tie together the two suggestions together to develop a strategy of improving the facilities and programs of the district in order to attract out-of-town students, beginning with Little Compton, but also in preparation for a wave of school choice that might be coming our way… or the old fashioned method of school choice entailing attracting young families to the town based on the quality of the available education.

An unnamed grade school guidance counselor (not a resident, I don’t believe) suggests that Tiverton “decide what kind of community it wants to be”:

Deb Pallasch takes the podium in her own capacity to encourage the School Committee to “do whatever you can do to help people understand that they shouldn’t be complacent” about the financial town meeting, this year. She further encouraged the committee to stop planning for the future — not adding anything, not “looking at capital improvement” — and concentrate on retaining what it has (which we can understand to tie in with her play-nice-with-the-union approach):

Posted in FTM, School Committee, Tiverton, Videos | No Comments »

Marcia’s Revised School Committee Meeting

Mar 4th, 2010 by Justin_Katz

Marcia Pobzeznik’s report from the last Tiverton School Committee meeting was the top story on the front page of yesterday’s Newport Daily News:

Even though the School Committee majority of Bergandy, Wright and Danielle Coulter voted to ask for the study, Rearick said an in-depth discussion about phasing out the high school is premature because he has barely started compiling data. But others at a recent meeting wanted to talk about it.

Does she go on to quote Tiverton Citizens for Change President Dave Nelson, who stated at the meeting that TCC opposes closing the high school — or reducing any services, for that matter? No. Does she pass on the commentary of one townie who proclaimed loudly and often that Tiverton’s retirement communities are “a cancer on our community”? Nope; not newsworthy. How about the words of another concerned citizen who opposed closing the high school? No. Rather, the focus of her article is Tiverton’s top partisan, and here’s her next paragraph:

“This is something that had so many people in the public so upset we felt that frankly we should let them know there are people who share their angst with that type of solution,” said Charles Moran, chairman of the Tiverton Democratic Town Committee.

The only problem is that Moran didn’t speak at the meeting. Indeed, I didn’t even notice him there (although he may have been in the crowded room, somewhere).

Taking the time to attend town government meetings, and summoning the fortitude to speak at them, is valuable and important for all sorts of reasons. But getting your message to the readers of the Newport Daily News apparently should not be one of them, unless you’re a member of the Democrat Town Committee, that is; then you don’t even have to go.

Posted in Tiverton | 1 Comment »

Money Heat in Local Government

Mar 3rd, 2010 by Justin_Katz

My following of the Town Council’s doings has slipped, a bit, I’m afraid, so I’ve only picked up hints and news reports of the ongoing battle between council members and Town Treasurer Phil DiMattia:

A grab-bag of issues gave rise to the questioning, which were numerous and remained largely unresolved. It was unclear at meeting’s end what actions the treasurer would take in response to the council’s expressed concerns. In addition, there were other known questions that went unasked due to Mr. DiMattia’s unexpected departure.

One issue discussed at length was a $46,267 item listed in the annual financial audit, that appeared as a public works “expenditure” in the restricted landfill closure account.

With Mr. DiMattia before them at the witness table, council members fired away.

As a restricted account, the landfill money is not supposed to be available for spending. Other issues that the members raised had to do with the absence of interest reported on sewer interceptor bonds, questions with reporting of abatements, and spending on an audit that the council expresses authority to approve. No accusations of wrongdoing have been made, that I’ve seen.

Mr. DiMattia published a letter in yesterday’s Newport Daily News that addressed such issues:

The article states incorrectly that there are outstanding financial reports that are overdue on revenues, expenditures and interest income. I have completed all financial reports through January 2010 and issued an 82-page investment report to the Town Council. The council and I agreed that as treasurer, I will prepare an investment report on a quarterly basis and the next investment report is due in April.

The article also was incorrect when it implied that as town treasurer, I am responsible for budget shortfalls. The Tiverton town charter, Section 602, states that the Tiverton town treasurer’s only budget responsibility is to prepare an annual department budget for the treasurer’s office, which is submitted to the Budget Committee for review and approval. The revenue and expenditure budget is a collective effort of all department heads, the town administrator, the Town Council members and the Budget Committee and approved by the voters of Tiverton at the annual financial town meeting in May. …

The article once again is incorrect in assigning blame to the treasurer for the loss in the Landfill Investment Account. This account is being reviewed and still must be verified by detailed schedules yet to be received for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2009, from the audit firm Parmelee, Poirier & Associates LLP. All of these landfill investments were made by prior treasurers before I became treasurer in fiscal 2009. I will complete a financial analysis of all landfill investments included in the audit for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2009, and present a report at the next Town Council meeting on March 8.

As a budgetary matter as well as a political one, this dispute bears watching. It’s already evidence, however, of the importance of contention in government at all levels. When officials who are ultimately accountable only to the voters butt heads, they tend to correct each other’s mistakes and scatter information beyond the town hall, state house, or capitol and into the public consciousness.

Posted in Spending, Town Council, Town Treasurer | 3 Comments »

Paying More for Garbage

Mar 2nd, 2010 by Justin_Katz

Tiverton’s “pay as you throw” trash pickup program, whereby residents will pay the town for the bags that they use for garbage disposal, is not yet in effect, but in January, the Town Council voted to have the solicitor put together the necessary legal language. Here’s the video. (For video of an earlier hearing, see here, and for my Sakonnet Times letter explaining why this could amount to an additional tax, see here.)

Posted in Taxes, Tiverton, Town Council, Videos | 1 Comment »

How High Will the Increase Go

Mar 1st, 2010 by Justin_Katz

And so begins the annual game of trying to determine how much of a tax increase Tiverton residents will have to stomach in the next budget:

To pay for what the town and schools say they need for next year would require an 11.83 percent property tax increase, said Jeff Caron, chairman of Tiverton’s elected budget committee.

If both the school department and the town “level funded” their budgets for next year — meaning they would spend no more dollars next year than they did this — their respective budgets would be close to next year’s cap of 4.5 percent.

Mr. Caron said the calculations in his Feb. 18 worksheet (which he says are subject to change) assume zero assistance from the state next year — no general state revenue sharing and no revenue to the town from state collected motor vehicle taxes. The amount needed from local property taxes next year to make up for that lost state revenues, he said, would be about 4.4 percent, just under the cap.

As we’ve seen, the School Committee does not seem as if it intends to ask for level funding, and on the municipal side, Town Council members and other local officials tend to talk about “zero impact,” which has, in the past, meant that the tax rate wouldn’t change although spending was increasing.

Whether the state will cut Rhode Island’s cities and towns to zero aid has yet to be seen, but prudence would suggest behaving as if it might. That’s a long-term prescription, by the way, requiring some rethinking about what our town does to promote economic growth.

Posted in Tiverton | 1 Comment »

Tiverton Benefits from an Unfair Formula

Feb 28th, 2010 by Justin_Katz

Go to town meetings for a while, and you’ll eventually hear some elected or appointed official — more often than not School Committee Vice Chair Sally Black — list the lack of a fair education funding formula at the state level among the reasons for Tiverton’s financial woes.

The missing consideration is that reworking such a formula to make it “fair” means that some of Rhode Island’s cities and towns will receive less, and I’ve always suspected that Tiverton would be among them.   Therefore, I’m unsurprised that the funding formula that the state Education Department proposed last week would trim Tiverton’s state aid by $1.5 million, or 26.9%:

While the specific numbers are preliminary and subject to General Assembly approval, the leaders of the House and Senate and the state commissioner of education support the passage of such an education funding formula before the end of June. …

… the formula — which takes into account student enrollment, student need, and local tax capacity, among other factors — hurts and helps some communities regardless of their size or location.

No doubt, the people who’ve stressed the need for a “fair funding formula” through years of budget shortfalls (combined with broad inaction) are sure to spit up their tea at the notion that Barrington may see its aid almost triple (albeit from a tiny base of $2.0 million) while their own decreases.  It’s been clear to anybody who’s paid attention that what town officials mean when they say “fair” is “manipulating policy to give us more taxpayer dollars without having to pay a political price for taking it ourselves.”

For that reason, residents should consider an update to the formula to be unlikely. In the meantime, there’s no better strategy for addressing annual budgetary shortfalls than fashioning budgets that do not rely on the calculations and manipulations of the governing gang in Providence.

Posted in School Committee, State Aid, Tiverton | No Comments »

Responding to Deb Pallash

Feb 28th, 2010 by DavidN

I would like to respond to Deb Pallash’s Letter to the Editor to the Newport Daily News titled “Fight with unions cannot interfere with education” by thanking her for her efforts to help improve Tiverton’s schools. Of particular interest was Ms. Pallash’s statement “Long-term changes can never be achieved through force, bullying or disrespect″.  We could not agree more.

One might suppose her words are directed towards National Education Association Tiverton leadership, for their role in slow rolling the current Teacher contract negotiations through numerous State Labor Board Complaints and petty squabbles over ‘ground rules’. Instead, it is the School Committee Ms Pallash seeks to caution from engaging in such behavior, and instead, “find rational middle ground”. While Ms Pallash is thoughtful and well intentioned, there is more we must be aware of.

According to NEA/Tiverton Union President Amy Mullen, NEA Assistant Director Patrick Crowley has filed complaints with the Rhode Island State Labor Relations Board regarding the posting of information about contract negotiations on the Tiverton Schools’ web site. This posting is mostly basic budget data describing Tiverton’s School Budget. It contains, among other things, over a half million dollars for pay raises and almost $300K for increases in health benefits. Yes, an INCREASE of over $800K over the previous contract. Instead of accepting this generous offer, despite desperate economic conditions, the NEA has taken to filing grievances. I do not believe ‘middle ground’ is what Mullen and Crowley are after. They want more, and they want it out of the public’s view. This sounds like the force, bullying and disrespect to which Ms Pallash refers; from the union towards the school committee, the town and ultimately the students of the Tiverton Schools.

Taxpayers have funded this generosity for too long. Taxpayers are angry at government that will not control spending, while allowing students to suffer with less. TCC supports the preservation of current student programming, holding the line on taxes and reduction of labor costs through contract reform. Any 2010 spending increases must be kept well below the Tax Cap.

Unbelievably, the tone deaf NEA feel big salary increases combined with generous health and retirement benefits are a right, not a privilege, and ignore the needs of our community. To pay next years’ $20 million in labor costs the School Committee is contemplating cutting funding for books, pencils and paper for heavens sake! Do you want your town officials to allow this?

Had enough? Create Change, become a candidate for Tiverton public office. Email us at info@tivertonCC.com.

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Posted in Letters to the editor, Spending, Taxes, Tiverton, Unions | No Comments »

Tiverton committee enables teacher union strategy

Feb 28th, 2010 by Justin_Katz

As one of the Tiverton residents at the January 26 school committee meeting who presented “a ‘bust the union’ political strategy,” according to Deborah Pallasch’s recent letter to you, I feel obliged to provide some context for your readers. I don’t agree that looking to the school district’s — and town’s — largest line item to cover the bulk of the projected budgetary shortfall is “extreme.”

On January 27, 2009, the school committee approved a largely retroactive contract for teachers that ate up about $300,000 of that year’s budget, added approximately $150,000 to the current year’s, and is contributing more than that to the $600,000-plus increase in salaries and benefits budgeted for the next fiscal year. At a November 2008 meeting, Ms. Pallasch argued for approval, saying, “Let’s start working on the new one, and give ourselves a little bit of room to refocus on the classroom and away from the adults.” The argument was that we should resolve the running dispute while there was still time to negotiate the subsequent contract amicably.

At the time, I spoke up to predict that the union would not negotiate. Rather, it would wait out the recession based on the obvious reasoning that it could avoid concessions during hard economic times and — as we’ve taught its members to expect — receive retroactive raises when times improved. I also handed out a chart showing that there had been no abatement of the increases in teacher salaries and benefits in the past decade. Indeed, the per-pupil dollar amount had gone up more (54%) than the same number for the state as a whole (40%). Over the same period, the chart showed that most other expenditures had hardly moved.

Well, negotiations did not resume with an amicable tone. Indeed, in August, the union pointed out a clause in the contract extending it for another year. The school committee had somehow missed the trick that it was supposed to notify the union of its intention to negotiate the next contract a full month before the previous one was actually approved. Changes in healthcare copayments for which the committee had budgeted went out the window. So did negotiations.

Now, a year after its ill-considered vote, the school committee is talking about cutting supplies and classroom technology. They’re approaching the town’s budget committee with numbers that will require double-digit tax increases. ‘And here’s Deb Pallasch: “Let’s realize that we’re all in this together …Let’s work through the process that we have, which is collective bargaining. Let’s go to mediation. If we need to go to arbitration, let’s go to arbitration.”

By way of reply: First, a hard line, including zero probability of retroactive raises, must be part of the collective bargaining process if a reasonable balance is to be struck. Second, Pallasch’s assertion, in her letter, that I’m suggesting “$750,000 or more of cuts in salaries and benefits” is simply not true. Most of the amount necessary to close projected deficits could be achieved simply by freezing salaries and benefits at their current rate. It wouldn’t even be a “concession,” because the union currently has no contract. (Again, why would they negotiate if the committee behaves as if there’s a contract in place regardless?)

Third, Pallasch’s accusation that my suggestion would incur legal fees is a silly ploy in light of her willingness to go through the processes of mediation and arbitration, which also require lawyers. In the meantime, our students are suffering by their lack of proficiency in math and science and by the ever decreasing amount of programs and resources available to them, even as well-paid adults reap rewards at a pace with no correlation with the economy.

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Posted in Letters to the editor, School Committee, Spending, Unions | No Comments »

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