There are currently two letters on the Sakonnet Times Web site that merit note. The first, from me, is a version of this tivertoncc.com post describing the basic financial picture at which the Budget Committee has been looking. The numbers are a moving target, but they remain accurate enough to stand as a basis for determining the appropriate approach for resolving shortfalls.
The second, by high school teacher Ed Davis, is notable because he seeks to leverage a comment that I made to a post over on Anchor Rising. As regular readers will know, I’ve since revised my position, basically for the reason that I’d been misled by the school district’s reference to “the cap.”
The cap is actually a limit on the amount of additional money that the town can raise from property taxes. What the district calls “the cap” has to do with what it requests from the town. Thus, by the district’s definition, the town would have to make up its entire drop in state aid — which just about exactly eats up the actual cap — in a budget that’s just about half the size of the schools’. That is to say that the cuts to municipal services would have to be even more draconian. In short, I’d had a skewed impression of what “level funding” the schools meant in relation to gutting town services.
Regarding Mr. Davis’s reference to my family’s dependence on the Tiverton school system, I’d note that whether that circumstance will continue is very much an open question, depending entirely on money, not preference. Whatever the case (and I find it unfortunate that union members would involve my children in the public debate), my own family’s situation is irrelevant. The point against unnecessarily dramatic cuts to the schools was a moral one, not a self-serving one. Experience suggests that a disappointing number of people disbelieve that it’s possible to come to conclusions without regard to one’s own benefit, but such is the case, here.
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