School Committee Chairman Jan Bergandy’s reaction to the Budget Committee’s vote to maintain the town’s current allocation to the school department is telling. From yesterday’s Newport Daily News:
“Even with concessions, we’ll probably have to strip everything,” Bergandy said of how the school system could operate nextyearwiththesameamount of money. But Bergandy said the vote is so “extreme” that he believes that the majority of voters will not approve it.
“If you bring things to the extreme, I think enough people with common sense will say. ‘This cannot happen,’” Bergandy said. “This is a very serious blow and we have to look at this as a committee and translate to the citizens what this will mean.”
“Bring things to the extreme”? I’d suggest that there are actually two approaches to a budget number at work, here, and it’s indicative of the view community leaders typically take that Bergandy begins with what the district thinks it needs. Reporter Marcia Pobzeznik zipped past the key comment from Budget Committee Vice Chair Rob Coulter from the other perspective:
On Monday, Coulter said that cuts in state aid to both the municipal and school budgets would require local appropriations to increase by an amount that would be just below the state cap. If the school and municipal budgets are funded as proposed, the tax increase would be more than 13 percent.
To emphasize: Using the best available predictions of revenue for the town, simply maintaining level funding will result in a tax increase that is only $29,000 less than the cap. In other words, the “extreme” taxpayer-focused view already results in the 4.5% increase in taxes that is supposed to be the greatest amount under the law.
This outcome has been entirely predictable, and yet Bergandy’s committee has annually made decisions in the wrong direction, approving an increase in remuneration for highly paid teachers and opting to spend a federal windfall. If only hitting up taxpayers for another 4.5% (which is about twice inflation, at this point) is “extreme,” then it’s extreme defense.
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