One unexpected benefit of this moving around was that I managed to catch Director of Administration and Finance Doug Fiore in the hallway to clarify something: The teacher union’s maneuver to avoid the 18% healthcare copay (over the current 12%) cost the district $120,000 this year.

8:15 p.m.

OK. They’re back, talking budget, related to a legal opinion from RIDE, today, answering some question that attorney Robinson had sent regarding how the district should calculate its maximum request and such.

According to the assistant education commissioner, federal stimulus money cannot be used to calculate the local spending increase. (As I said had to be the case if English means anything when it’s used in the law.) Consequently, the committee’s requested local contribution of $21,285,285 must be reduced to $20,979,030.

Moreover, the commissioner told the district to factor in a 3.8% reduction in state and federal aid, which means the committee’s total general revenue request will be $25,620,772, which is slightly down from the request of $25,645,096, but still higher than the Budget Committee’s recommended $25,333,181.

9:00 p.m.

Attorney Robinson presented his opinion about the RIDE document, and I took the podium to offer a bit of rebuttal. The upshot of the discussion is that it is inaccurate to say that any number appropriated by the FTM is “illegal” provided it gives at least as much as the previous year appropriation of local funds. It might be accurate to say that it would be “illegal” for the FTM to vote for a number that does not mention the expected state and federal aid. In that case, according to RIDE, the town would be responsible for any aid shortfalls.

From home:

I should note that the committee voted (with only Danielle Coulter opposed) to change its request at the FTM to the numbers, cited above, suggested by the RIDE opinion. (The committee and administrators persisted in calling it “a ruling,” but in my opinion, that’s a little misleading.)

I should also note that it came up that it would be perfectly legal for the FTM to vote to expect zero state or federal aid and appropriate accordingly. As a practical matter, that’s clearly not a reasonable expectation, and the town should stick to the Budget Committee’s recommendation, but it is good to know.

(To expand: I’m not sure what the repercussions would be for the School Committee’s budgeting were that to happen. I suspect they could delay major cuts until the money came in, but I’m not sure that nothing would get blown out in the confusion.)

Part of the budgetary debate behind the threats of drastic cuts is the relevance of “restricted aid.” The following five clips, taken with my camera, present the School Committee and Superintendent Bill Rearick’s full presentation of talking points for the benefit, mostly, of an out-of-the-ordinary videotaping by somebody other than me. An interesting couple of counterpoised points regarding “restricted aid” come in clip 4.

The clip begins with local Democrat Deb Pallasch explaining, to calls of “that’s right” from Rearick and certain committee members:

I think where the confusion comes in is with the restricted aid: We don’t show the revenue, but we don’t show the expenses, either, because when you go to the town and you look at the docket, we’re talking about the revenue we can use… Restricted aid has nothing to do with general expenses. You can’t take IDEA money and pay for a math teacher.

But at the end of the clip, Director of Administration and Finance Doug Fiore explains the following about the 2011 budget:

Right now we’re asking for $617,000 of additional funds, and we’re losing over $500,000 of IDEA ARRA funds that were a one-time boost to our revenue, this year. Those services need to be provided; those expenses aren’t going to go away no matter what we do, we still have children with IEPs. That’s going to basically eat up over half of the additional funds we’re asking for.

Ms. Pallasch kept conceding that the whole “restricted” thing is very confusing, but I’m not confused. “Restricted” means taxpayers don’t have to know about aid that freed up local money for other expenses like salaries and benefits, except when the aid decreases and the school committee wants Tiverton residents to pay for the previously restricted expenses as well as whatever the district spent the liberated dollars on. Got it? They can’t do just anything with restricted funds, but they can do anything with the funds that restricted funds allow them not to spend on restricted expenses, which were general expenses until somebody else offered to pay for them, and which become general expenses again when the additional revenue goes away. That’s why a chart of the district’s total aid — including state and federal, restricted and general — looks like this:

The dotted-line box is the amount of additional tax money that the School Committee would like to draw from the town, and it’s obvious that most of it is intended to be a general revenue replacement of restricted revenue. The question is: How did all of that targeted money get built into the budget? That’s something that’s not answered in these videos.

Just how far over the cap the town can go is not known, but Town Administrator James Goncalo, at the request of the Town Council, has inquired of the state how much over the cap voters legally would be allowed to go when voting on a budget during the financial town meeting.

That’s arguably incorrect. The package that Goncalo sent to the state doesn’t really request an upper boundary. It would be more accurate to say that it presents the Town Council’s and School Committee’s preferred budgets in order to see whether the state would grant a waiver for them.

Remember, there is no process to ask “how much over the cap voters legally would be allowed to go.” There’s a process for a waiver, which Goncalo and the Town Council have twisted in order to get, essentially, an uncertified waiver.

Second:

The School Committee is requesting nearly $700,000 more than the Budget Committee is recommending. Superintendent William Rearick said that if the schools receive $1 more, a school closing and cuts to music and athletic programs are a real possibility, but the School Committee could also take more egregious steps, such as taking the town to court or imposing a contract on teachers.

I know I wasn’t alone, in the room, in catching this little stunner. IN the mind of Superintendent Rearick, imposing a contract on the teachers is more egregious (I think he said, “extreme.”) than closing a brand new elementary school. If anybody has doubts about the allegiances of the people who run our schools, Mr. Rearick’s presentation last night certainly didn’t dispel them.

Me, I’m a silver-lining guy. At least the superintendent is now willing to say publicly that imposing contract terms on a union that’s (predictably) been digging in its heels to wait out the recession is an actual possibility, albeit more extreme than taking sports away from students. Baby steps.

It’s a good thing, it appears, because there’s the peculiar change of audience. Per usual, Newport Daily News reporter Marcia Pobzeznik is here, but both Laura Epke and Deb Pallasch are also in attendance — as well as the crew that usually records Town Council meetings. It appears that Epke might have asked them to record this meeting.

Superintendent Bill Rearick just recommended, in keeping with advice from a special education specialist, to reduce teaching staff by two special ed teachers and 2.8 special ed assistants, saving $228,356. The cause is a restructuring of a regional program that will impose no additional costs. The projected budget is still $319,982 over the committee’s increase cap.

Of course, that’s by their dishonest manipulation of last year’s local contribution, mixing in unmentioned budget numbers. (That the state Department of Education might give the nod to claiming that federal dollars count as “local funds” — even if that is the way the law would have it — does not make the move honest. Rhode Island specializes in “legal but dishonest,” and I sincerely hope that any school committee member who backs this garbage at least feels a weensy bit squeamish about doing so.)

Moving on to the budget, School Committee Chairman Jan Bergandy noted that there have been no concessions. Carroll Herrmann went on for quite some time about the horrible cuts that a $1 local increase would require.

Then Rearick challenged all of the supposed falsehoods being stated in public (“on the air”) and declared that he’d “debate anybody anywhere as long as it’s filmed by a third party.”

I suspect this is why there’s a camera here. I’ve got some questions for the committee, but I think I’ll keep my seat.

Committee Member Danielle Coulter did defend the suspicions of townsfolk, noting that the numbers were kept from people who didn’t know what specifically to request and that they wouldn’t have known to request what they weren’t told was there.

7:25 p.m.

My questions, by the way, are why, if the restricted dollars have to be left out of budget discussions, the requested increase from the town is suspiciously equivalent to reductions in restricted dollars.

Second: Is that why they’ve been manipulating the appropriation from last year in order to exceed the plain language of the spending increase cap?

Third, Education Commissioner Deborah Gist told the General Assembly that municipalities are expecting more stimulus funds, but I don’t think that’s accounted for in the budget proposal.

7:46 p.m.

I’ve meant to note that the committee mentioned that it’s looking for something on the order of $300,000 in concessions from the teacher union. That is nowhere near enough.

Another question I might have asked if tonight weren’t so clearly a setup had to do with Herrmann’s mention of the fact that a $1 increase in the school’s budget would probably force them to violate the state’s Basic Education Plan. Current precedent, out of East Providence, suggests that a budget violating the BEP coinciding with an absence of a current contract would permit the committee to impose whatever cuts it deems necessary in employee compensation.

East Providence, by the way, just cut teacher pay by another 5%.

As you can see, the basic intention of the School Committee and administration is to raise local taxes in order to make up for a decrease in state and especially federal aid, which was particularly high this year. The picture gets a bit more interesting when it’s limited to that aid:

The green segments of these columns represent the state and federal aid that the schools have used publicly in their budget discussions. The red segments represent state and federal aid that have been undisclosed until members of TCC pushed for them, this week. The reason the district has given for keeping these millions of dollars out of the discussion is that they’re “restricted” funds intended for specific purposes.

Consider where that puts the current budget discussion, though: The school district is insisting that taxpayers will be “decimating,” “gutting,” and “destroying” the school system if we don’t increase our contribution to make up for a loss in restricted funds that we didn’t even have to know about, before, because they essentially amounted to direct purchases of services by the state and country. During this school year, those “restricted” funds went from 5.43% of the total budget to 7.93%. In dollar terms, that’s a jump from $1,443,381 to $2,141,944; now the school departments wants Tiverton residents to work that windfall permanently into the budget.

It seems to me that if we didn’t need to know about this portion of revenue and expenses, before, because it didn’t involve our money, then we aren’t responsible for the services that it provided. If anybody in town is gutting the regular programming of the schools, it’s the people who insist that they’ll keep funding restricted programs with general revenue should locals decline to pick up the tab.

(d) Notwithstanding any provision of the general or public laws to the contrary: …

(iv) the budget adopted and presented by any school committee for the fiscal year 2011 shall not propose the appropriation of municipal funds (exclusive of state and federal aid) in excess of one hundred four and one-half percent (104.5%) of the total of municipal funds appropriated by the city or town council for school purposes for fiscal year 2010

On Tuesday night, the School Committee voted to propose that the town give it $21,285,285, which is 106.17% of the $20,047,960 that the financial town meeting appropriated out of municipal funds during the current fiscal year. To skirt the plain language of the law — “municipal funds (exclusive of state and federal aid)” — the committee is arguing that the town “appropriated” both the local and state numbers, thus implicitly promising to make up for shortfalls in state money.

As it happens, the school district did get the aid it was expecting, but the state used $293,067 of federal money as part of its total, and the people we elected to oversee the education of Tiverton’s children are claiming that such money must be kept out of this calculation. In other words, they’re insisting that students’ parents and neighbors are responsible for paying that $300,000 once again because it ultimately came from a different source.

The law is what you can get away with, I suppose, and legalese can spin just about any argument, but taking basic English as our guide, there’s simply no way to describe the School Committee’s maneuver other than: dishonest. Of course, to offer some bit of sympathy, I understand why the district might be panicking. After all, according to the federal government’s stimulus Web site Tiverton schools received an additional $1,276,521 in one-time grants, during this school year, and if the committee and administration built that into the budget, they’ve got quite a bit of money to make up.

From what I can tell from this state document, by the way, that’s apart from $296,081 that filtered from the feds through the state for Title I and special education and another $739,833 from the state for other “restricted” purposes. While those of us who labor in the private sector have been struggling, it’s been very flush times for those in the public school business, it would appear.

Still, once they’ve crossed the line from fair and reasonable discussion to tugging on any thin thread of hope that the lawyers can concoct, we’re into a very serious matter, with grave political implications at the least.

Some days, carpentry can provide a blend of exhaustion, personal injury, and professional belittlement that makes one lament that a college degree isn’t worth as much as it was some decades ago. But now that I’ve typed it out, that description sounds quite a bit like the end result of involvement on “the wrong side” in local politics.

7:38 p.m.

We’re in. The first order of business was to announce a vote on March 31st to continue mediation with the NEA. Black, Herrmann, and Wright for; Bergandy and Coulter against.

They’re now discussing what final number they should send to the Budget Committee. Member Leonard Wright moved $21,285,285, and Rearick is suggesting modification to incorporate just under $5 million of state aid in the official number.

7:42 p.m.

Reviewing the number, I notice that it’s the same as used on the budget documents handed out at last night’s Town Council meeting. According to Town Administrator Jim Goncalo’s 2011 Fiscal Year Maximum Levy Worksheet, that’s a 6.172% increase over last year’s local contribution, or $1,237,325.

As I type, Council Vice Chairman Sally Black is giving a review of the dishonesty and sneaky politics of her opposition last year. Ahem.

7:47 p.m.

If this goes through, I can only say: So much for the School Committee’s claim that it has every intention of reaching the cap, as well as the Town Council’s vote last night assuming that it would do so.

7:52 p.m.

They’re reading off some items that may be cut if the district doesn’t get the money it says it needs.

* Closing an elementary school.
* Eliminating every extra curricular activity.
* Cutting music programs.
* Residency officer.
* Pupil supplies.
* Office supplies.
* Textbooks.
* Library books.
* Special ed assistance.
* Maintenance worker.
* Restructuring tech position.
* Student councilors.
* Library aids.
* Chorus and strings.

No mention of the fact that a 6% decrease to current remuneration packages for the adults who work in the school would solve the problem.

Bergandy: If we don’t get union concessions, we will have the same results.

8:03 p.m.

The vote to forward the requested budget above was 4 to 1 for. Bergandy, Black, Wright, and Herrmann for; Coulter against.

To review: This number isn’t even to the fictional spending cap that the school committee has been chasing. Even that number would result in a likely 9.04% increase in tax levy, which is more than twice the real tax cap.

8:06 p.m.

They’re discussing whether to officially oppose two pieces of legislation, one for binding arbitration and one for automatically continuing contracts when there is no negotiating agreement.

Carol Herrmann stated that she’s not comfortable giving the school committee unilateral power to impose terms when there’s no contract in place. “Dictators aren’t known for being benevolent.” Why an arbitrator with binding power wouldn’t be a “dictator,” I’m not sure.

8:23 p.m.

Unanimous against binding arbitration.

Now, they’re discussing the continuing contract legislation. Attorney Robinson noted the possibility, given Judge Silverstein’s ruling that balanced budget language in the law supersedes all other statutory requirements, the legislation for continuing contracts looks like it might give the unions priority over the rights of everybody else involved — taxpayers, students, etc.

Unanimous but for an abstention by Herrmann on the continuing contract legislation.

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.

• The school department believes that they were shorted in the current year. Depending on what funds must be counted in the budget for purposes of the mandated local “maintenance of effort,” it could be anywhere from a quarter million dollars to four million dollars.
• They feel positive about some sort of concession from the teachers’ union, but they don’t want to take any budgetary actions before they know.

Here’s the language in state law requiring a certain increase for school departments.

7:18 p.m.

School Committee Chairman Jan Bergandy stated that “It was always our plan to go below the cap.” Frankly, as somebody who has sat through just about every school committee meeting during this budget season, that really hasn’t been an impression that I’ve gotten.

Superintendent Bill Rearick seems optimistic that they’ll be able to wrap up mediation with the teachers’ union in time for the FTM. From what I hear, any concessions won’t be anywhere near enough to make up budget shortfalls. In other words, the impression is that they’re seeking to lock in a number before the FTM.

7:37 p.m.

Council Member Ed Roderick noted that what the School Committee is calling “the cap” really isn’t the cap, because it doesn’t take into account the town’s budget. Rearick responded that he thought debt service should be included in calculating the cap, and since the town has so much debt, thanks to school bonds, we can just go ahead and raise taxes more.

Town Council member Louise Durfee quipped, at some point that, “It would solve all our problems if we get that car tax.” More increased taxes.

Apparently, if I’m understanding correctly, the schools’ complaint is that they’re counting their “appropriation” as total money, so the town is required to make up lost state and federal money that was estimated in the “appropriation.”

I took the mic to mention that (1) the state’s language speaks to the “local funds” that must go up, (2) the financial town meeting calculated the necessary increase on a per pupil basis, and (3) the FTM explicitly stated that any extra money should return to the town. Council President Don Bollin said that the language about returning money has never been enforceable.

The, oddly, Rearick said that he concurs, leaving me at a loss as to what their complaint actually is. I’ll have to check the tape, I guess.

8:09 p.m.

Council Member Jay Lambert noted that many older residents can’t afford increases in taxes. I took the podium to note that many younger families, like mine, are seeing higher costs and lower income, as well.

I also challenged a previous statement by School Committee member Leonard Wright in which he claimed that each teacher would have to take a $10,000 cut in salary/benefits to save $1.8 million. Wright reached that argument by stating that the town needed $1.4 million, so $1.8 million would leave a little extra (for legal challenges). I made the point that he was calculating the $1.4 million off of next year’s budget, which includes something like $700,000 in increased salary/benefit costs.

He doggedly held to his number as an example, so the year of the budget didn’t matter, but it manifestly does matter, because the town wouldn’t need $10,000 from each teacher’s current salary. You’d need about half that, which is much less than many private sector incomes have fallen.

8:25 p.m.

The School Committee has departed, and Ms. Durfee noted that she “can’t live with the Budget Committee’s cuts” and suggested a likelihood that they’ll need to go for a waiver of the tax cap. In the interim, she’s suggesting that Town Administrator Jim Goncalo come up with a lower municipal budget to get a little closer to the Budget Committee and then return to the Budget Committee with the new numbers.

8:34 p.m.

The Town Council is discussing some language from Solicitor Andy Teitz by which the General Assembly would allow cities and towns to postpone budget decisions for 90 days, so that they can be made with better information.

8:40 p.m.

Teitz suggested that Town Clerk Nancy Mello send the draft legislation to every other city and town.

Leonard Wright is noting that a budget decision in August or September would present really big problems considering that the school department must notify teachers that they may not be asked back by March.

Of course, I’d add, with contracts typically ending at the end of the fiscal year (end of June, I believe), moving the FTM would allow town bodies to operate with a (theoretically) hard-stop deadline for negotiations well before they know what the taxpayers are willing to provide.

8:50 p.m.

The council is moving forward with the proposed legislation. Between discussions, Durfee brought up the possibility of increasing car taxes again.

8:59 p.m.

Council member Cecil Leonard moved to take discussion of exceeding the tax cap off the table. Only Jay Lambert voted with him.

Astonishingly — and I really mean that adverb; it’s not just a flourish — nobody has brought up the legal ruling that affirmed the East Providence School Committee in its decision to implement unilateral employment terms to save money. Honestly, even if nobody on the committee has any intention of doing such a thing, as a simple matter of negotiations, that possibility should be mentioned. That it has not been (and will not be) illustrates the erroneous approach that these local committees take to negotiations.

On top of that omission, the committee is discussing whether an error resulted in the district’s not getting all of the money from the town to which it was entitled. Speaking about stabilization funds, Superintendent Bill Rearick stated that he thought additional funds were supposed to go directly to the district. Once again, everybody in the room is simply ignoring the fact that the financial town meeting explicitly required all additional money to flow back to the town.

7:42 p.m.

Nothing resolved. Rearick’s going to put together a detailed list of the horrors that will face the schools if the district doesn’t get the budget it wants, because apparently facing down the unions scares the committee even more than decreasing services and opportunities for students.

8:05 p.m.

Wide-ranging discussion about Department of Education-related topics. They’ve now turned toward teacher evaluation and performance compensation. Apparently, RIDE hasn’t been able to find a pay system anywhere in the country that suits their needs and will building one of their own.

1. Justice Silverstein emphasized that Rhode Island law forbids teacher contracts from extending beyond three years’ duration.
2. When a contract has expired it has, well, expired and has no legally binding force.
3. Rhode Island law requires school districts to maintain balanced budgets, and the remuneration of employees cannot be presumed to take precedence over other expenditures.

Number 1, it seems to me, means that the union’s gotcha, last August, by which it claimed that it didn’t need to renegotiate its contract for this school year (and, moreover, avoided higher health care coshares) had no basis in the law. If the district’s attorney, Stephen Robinson, wasn’t aware of this consideration, then he should be replaced at first opportunity. If the school committee opted not to pursue it, then that decision should be added to the evidence that they should all be replaced, as well.

Combining numbers 2 and 3, the lesson for Tiverton is that the financial town meeting (FTM) can set the district’s budget and empower the school committee to unilaterally extract the required savings from the unions. To put it bluntly, in ongoing negotiations, the School Committee should take the Budget Committee’s recent vote to place a leveled budget on the docket for the FTM as a reason to require a 5-6% reduction in the salary/health benefit line items of its contracts. If the union does not agree, and if the FTM does not produce a much larger pool of money for the schools, the School Committee should declare negotiations at an impasse and impose the necessary savings.

If the School Committee agrees to a more conciliatory contract prior to the FTM, it will be evidence that its members wish to lock the town into giving teachers’ pay priority over services, programs, and facilities. All of the talk about taxpayers’ attacks on kids will be so much vile rhetoric, because the committee will have been the one to determine that the students should be squeezed to compensate for revenue shortfalls.

Tiverton Citizens for Change is not anti-services or anti-school. In fact we have stated in multiple public forums, in writing and in speech, that we oppose cutting any town services and believe that all of our goals can be achieved with contract reform. Those asserting that TCC is anti-this-and-that is being flat-out dishonest. We ask that voters take note of this as they consider their choices in 2010.

See Brian Medeiros, Christopher Cotta and Michael Burk’s anti TCC rants.

Our position is that citizens are angry at government that will not control spending, while allowing students and residents 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 as we have seen with Police, Fire and Municipal unions. Any 2010 spending increases must be kept well below the Tax Cap.

TCC will issue a public statement describing our support for a specific percent increase before the FTM which takes place May 8.

Dave Nelson
President of Tiverton Citizens for Change

I can say that with both of my kids, our experience with Tiverton schools has been remarkable. Nothing’s perfect, and I sometimes may have an issue with the school department, but given the enormous challenges they face, I believe that overall, our schools serve our town and our kids well. Like most services, education isn’t just an expense, but an investment in our own future. I speak not in political terms, but as a parent of a 7-year-old who loves his school, loves his teachers, loves his classmates, and is doing phenomenally well. I see every day the hard work of dedicated professionals.

As well meaning as they may be, folks like Mr. Medeiros will soon find themselves fighting a rear-guard action to preserve a shell of the services that they characterize TCC as attempting to dismantle. To the contrary, TCC is working — and withstanding the vitriol and defamation that such activity inevitably draws — to ensure that his children see their educational opportunities increase, rather than deteriorate. As a former member of the Town Council, Medeiros bears minimal responsibility, but during his time in local government, this was the trend in school district funding:

At the latest PTO meeting for Pocasset Elementary School, Principal Fran Blaess noted that the school lacks the funds to replace a broken ring in its playground. And yet, the district’s working budget documents (PDF) call for more than a half-million-dollar increase in salaries, with another $200,000 increase for medical benefits. When the administration and School Committee do speak of decreasing payroll, they always lead with layoffs — equivalent to a reduction in services and programs. They don’t want to presume even to appear to be unilaterally dictating contract terms.

Well, they should be dictating terms, and they shouldn’t see their action as unilateral. They should see it as backed and supported not only by taxpayers who, themselves, have been watching their incomes shrink, but also by parents who are dispirited that they must pay for private school in order to procure the services that they enjoyed in public schools as children.

As nerve wracking as it may be, sometimes the boat has to be rocked, not to destroy it, but to save it.