Skip Navigation
This table is used for column layout.
Board of Finance Minutes 05/25/04 Public Hearing
BOARD OF FINANCE
PUBLIC HEARING MINUTES
MAY 25, 2004

Chairman Tom Harrison called the Public Hearing to order at 7:00 P.M. in the Community Room, Avon Senior Center.  Members Tom Gugliotti, Bill Hooper, Steve McGuff and Mark Zacchio were present.  Michael Monts and Jim Speich were absent.

The Chairman led the audience in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Mr. Harrison welcomed the citizens to the second Public Hearing on the budget.  He reported this meeting will begin with a report from Dwight Johnson, our Town Attorney.  Then the Board of Education, Town Council and Board of Finance will each make a slide presentation indicating changes made to the budgets since the Referendum.  Then the meeting will be opened to the Public.  Copies of the formal presentations are available for review and not included in these minutes.

He explained that because of an event at Roaring Brook School, many of the parents are unable to be here tonight.  There are a lot of documents available at the door; the flyer with “TOWN OF AVON PUBLIC HEARING” is the ONLY document prepared by the Town.  There is also a Board of Education preparation illustrating the slides they will be using.  The other documents are distributed by interested parties and are legal and acceptable.  It doesn’t diminish their value, but this is in answer to a question that came up at the last hearing.

Just to reiterate, Mr. Harrison stated this is a public hearing – everybody who wants to speak will be given the chance to speak.  We will stay as late as is necessary.  This should be a conversation, not a confrontation.  We will not allow heckling of any speaker; we will not allow applause or foot stamping.  Please treat each speaker with respect, with dignity, that’s they way it will work.  We are here tonight because of the results of the first Referendum; we had the absolute highest turnout we’ve ever had for any municipal election.  The total turnout was 4,556, or 43.8% of the voters.  The Chairman opened the meeting to questions and comments after the three formal presentations at 8:55 p.m.

Mike Decicco, 16 Timber Lane – I’ve been attending these sessions for almost two decades now, and I’m glad to hear that the municipal budget has not sacrificed what I consider the #1 priority which I consider is public safety and health, the police department and sanitation.  I think that’s number 1 that any municipality has to be concerned about.   I do have a question for the Board of Ed which has usually been a primary target for the budget.  What I want to know is what was the administrative position that was eliminated this year?  The other question is if I remember correctly, the director of guidance was eliminated last year, so how come we are eliminating it again this year?  Then I’d like to know what was cut to give you the $905,000 reduction.  Maybe that’s something you can explain later.  I’d like to know what position, the reason I’m asking, is I took great pains to go through your budget personnel budget in the library and I thought there were quite a few areas that could be targeted, primarily in personnel.  You’ve got assistant principals that earn something like $370,000.  Your have psychiatrists and social workers that earn $434,000.  You’ve got para-professionals that earn almost $900,000.  I’d like to know where they fit in the organization and how you can justify their positions.

Peggy Roell Chairman of the Board of Education:  Let me see if I can address  your questions in three different segments.  First, you are correct, the Director of Guidance was eliminated last year on the chart showing positions eliminated over the past several years.  The Director of Guidance was eliminated last year, the program director for English, world language, English as a second language was eliminated two years ago.  This year the administration is still working on the re-organization and an exact position has not been determined, but there will be one less administrator.  The $905,000, the Board of Ed is still working on that.  $130,000 of it relates to renegotiation of the health care benefits.  $175,000 relates to the special ed, out of district tuitions; beyond that there is a whole lot that was discussed at last week’s Board meeting and will be discussed further at our June 15th meeting and we’d like to invite anyone who would like to come that day.  As far as some of the other positions, the special ed group includes the social workers, the para-professionals, we have over 300 children who have been identified through play & placement team meetings which is a federally legislated process that we have to go through.  These children need special assistance.  Some of them is just speech help or something, some are very severely children, about 18 of them get sent out of district because we don’t have programs for them.  Another group gets taken care of, stays within our schools.  Some of the children in our schools are also very severely handicapped and require one to one aides or para-professionals.  We pay $15,000 or $16,000 a year for those aides in order to keep those children in our school district.  If we sent them out of school like we used to, between tuition and transportation costs, it would cost $75,000 to $100,000, as we see by the two children; one family moving out of town and the other student is moving back into district which saves $175,000 on two children.  The psychologists and social workers are all part of that same process to deal with special needs children.  The Assistant Principals spend about half their time working with special education; placement team meetings require an administrator.  If we didn’t have an assistant principal there, the principal would be there.  Most of our schools have 600 to 1,000 kids, 57 to 75 employees and the only supervisory people we have is the principal and vice-principals.  I don’t think there are very many businesses where one person would be supervising 50 or 60 employees, 500 or 600 children and 1,000 parents that are communicating with them.  That’s really why we need the vice principals.  Does that answer all your questions? (Yes.  It is my understanding that the para=professionals are assisting the teachers, am I right?)  No.  We have three para-professionals, one in each of the elementary schools that you might say are assistants to the teachers where they do Xeroxing, getting kids on and off busses, supervising lunches, supervising playground duty.  All the other para-professionals are for special education children. If they are in a classroom, they are with a special education child.  If their child doesn’t need help with a particular situation, they assist other children in a class room, but their main focus is the one to one responsibility.

Del Tepley, 10 Highwood Circle:  My question is for the Board of Education, in the area of special needs children and the paraprofessionals we were just discussing.  It seems to me that many of these programs result from Federal Mandated No Child Left Behind programs?  (No.)  Then I’m mistaken because the question I had was if we are impacted by the Federal and State mandate programs, what aid do we get from the Federal or State governments to finance them?  

Ms. Roell:  The Special Ed requirements came in in 1976.  At the time they came in the federal government was going to provide funding for it, but unfortunately they provided very little funding.  We get no federal funding, the state gives us some funding but the state formula is based on town’s income and a whole complicated formula that focuses primarily on average income.  Because our average income is much higher than most other towns in Connecticut, we get a very low number.  The last couple of years it’s been about $500,000. total.

Tom Mortimor, Stony Corners Circle:  I have a suggestion and why doesn’t the Town Council and Board of Finance and the Board of Education set up a committee, and for the next two or three years look at each department in the town and Board of Education to see ………….. to make it more effective, and reduce costs.  I think you sort of implied the Council was closing excellent programs to try to hold the budget and not have the situation we’ve had for the past few years.  You would probably need some oversight, somebody from the Town Manager and somebody from the town finance department to keep them involved in this.  I think that would go a long way to enhance the credibility of the concerns of the citizens over town funds, and also control.  Thank you.

Clair Henderson, 1 Keystone Circle:  I’ve lived here 26 years.  This is not a question, it’s really just to show my feelings.  During this entire budget process, we have seen a good portion of any potential tax increase have it be the use of surplus, application of savings realized in health care area and additional monies from the state.  However, we have only seen minimal reductions in spending.  This means that runaway spending has only been given and will reappear in future years when surplus is not available.   We can’t depend on dollars from the state and the health care savings may never happen again.  Until we change our behavior, and live within the means of those paying the bills, our spending will always be an issue.  I think we should defer revaluation as West Hartford has done.  Implement structural change to eliminate duplication of ….. realize that economy is scaled and work with the State to solve the property tax problem needed to pay for public education.  In the meantime, we should keep our spending increase to a measure in line with leading economic indicators such as the increase in the cost of living and social security for 2004.  Until I see such a number on the budget at referendum, I intend to vote no.  I urge everyone who is interested in fixing the process to do the same thing.  Thank you.
Diane Carney, 36 Rosewood Road:  I want to speak along the same vein as the previous people.  I’ve given the new budget proposal a lot of thought, I think it’s still too high.  With the revaluation added high, it’s still is a significant increase.  More can be done to reduce spending both by the Town and the Board of Education.  I’m obviously not an expert but just looking over the list of town employees, I have many questions about how we are spending our tax dollars.  For instance, we have 18 custodians, 14 at night and 4 during the day.  There are also two head custodians at night and two head custodians during the day.  This is a total of 22.  In addition, there is a director of buildings and grounds, a foreman for buildings and grounds, 4.8 maintenance mechanics, for a total cost of approximately $1,213,000.  The town employs a superintendent of public works, a foreman of buildings and grounds, 5 maintainers for buildings and grounds, 1 foreman of machinery and equipment and 3 maintenance mechanics at a cost of approximately $646,000.  We also have 2 directors of Finance, one for the Town at approximately  $83,000 and one for the schools at approximately $109,000.  This duplication of services can’t go on.  I don’t understand why the town and schools can’t provide some services for the same money.  I think we need to ask the Board of Ed to sit down and re-think what we have been doing.  Several towns including Madison, East Hampton, Guilford and Mansfield have combined their finances and building and grounds departments.  This cost saving measure is also one of the recommendations made by the state’s blue ribbon commission on property tax burdens and smart growth.  While tax payers are paying more attention to how their tax dollars are being spent as a result have become more involved in the process and voting the budget increases down if they feel there are obvious opportunities for reducing the cost of operations and that those opportunities are being followed.  I think that is what’s happening here.

Tom Gugliotti:  Those are all good points, Mrs. Carney.  I just want to mention that many of you will remember that not too long ago, 4, 5 or 6 years ago, there was a hew and cry in the Town about the poor state of the maintenance at the schools and the town properties and there was a question, why did it happen?  Why were we incurring expenses that could have been avoided had proper maintenance been applied on an on-going basis.  The items you mentioned certainly bear looking into and will certainly be thought about but the fact is it is my observation that the staff members in the schools who are responsible for maintenance and the staff members on the town side who are responsible for maintenance are pretty busy.  They don’t have time on their hands so that you can eliminate one or the other and have a lesser number of people handling all the buildings that the people are responsible for here in town.  In terms of the directors of finance of education or the town, I know Mr. Franzi and Ms. Colligan are very busy all day long doing the work they do on the town side and the education side.  I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect we can eliminate one position or the other and have that person doing the service for both.  Part of what we have to keep in mind is like looking at a mural in a museum.  If you get too close you can see all the little brush strokes but you can’t see the picture; if you back up you can see the entire picture but maybe you can’t see the brush strokes.  I think that happens when you look at our budget process; I know it does for me.   The fact is that Avon is rather large business and I think it should be run as a business.  I think everybody will agree, but what we can’t lose sight of is that it is a very big business.  We’re not a small town any more; we have beautiful schools, a beautiful senior center, wonderful roads, all these things for which Avon is know for as a quality town, a wonderful place to live.  You have to decide if you want to keep it that way or take a different course.  In the midst of that you have to find the most economical way to accomplish those goals.  Remember, it’s a large organization that’s being run here and in my estimation it’s a little bit unreasonable to say that we can do with one person when there are two sides to be consider and it takes two professionals to run this thing.

Risa Cappadonna, 183 Deercliff Road:  I have to say that we moved up to Avon 12 years ago from New York City and part of what we liked about this town was, first of all we had two young children at the time and we specifically moved here because of the school system was recommended so highly.  Also, coming from the city we were extremely impressed with the quality of all the services of the town.  One thing about moving to the suburbs from the city, however, was a sense of isolation between people.  Everybody seems segregated by age, interest, just being isolated in your cars and your homes.  You don’t see too many people walking the streets.  The sense of community just didn’t seem to be there and I think, it breaks my heart that you have different interests in the town fighting when everybody should be together to try to find a solution.  Everybody’s interests are important.  People who are on fixed incomes, your interests are important.  My grandmother used to say, however, the children are the future.  Families move into town because of the education and you want to keep the town growing and vital, you want to keep our population well educated  and I have one more thing to say in terms of running Avon as a business.  I know Avon is a very republican town and I know there’s a philosophy of starve the beast.  In other words, don’t give money to support services that people need.  I very strongly believe that all of us, the backbone of democracy and government, is to provide people, everybody, from the youngest to the oldest with the services that everybody needs and deserves and I feel very badly that because of the current economic situation, everybody here seems to be fighting over a very small piece of the pie.  If you think of spending 87 million dollars in Iraq and here we are fighting over $200 extra to pay for education, there’s a sense of proportion should all come together and figure this out.  This is what a community is about.  Otherwise we will have nothing.    

Mr. Harrison:  Just one comment about this being a town with more republicans than democrats, this might be true from a count point although I think in the registration of voters, there are more people unaffiliated than there are republican.
Let me tell you something as someone who’s been involved with the Wetlands Com-mission and now this Board, you could be at the meetings of all three boards and not know who’s a republican and who’s a democrat.  Politics on a partisan level don’t influence the decisions we make.

Dr. Bud Herrmann – ….. I think we should be more proactive.  You are the people who are closest to the voters, the Board of Ed is elected every four years they don’t really have much contact except with their own particular group.  You people on the Council, you have contact with all of the citizens so you should be able to get a feel for what these people want and pass this on to the Board of Finance and help them.  Another thing, years ago, it’s still in the Charter.  The Council is supposed to look at the Board of Ed’s budget and make suggestions and recommend cuts.  They don’t do that any more.  They dump it all on the Board of Finance.  Maybe that is because we were a little too active, but somehow it wouldn’t hurt you at all to look at that budget as well.  Another suggestion is we want you to participate in compromise.  I repeat, you should be more proactive, you should give these other two Boards feedback because you’re the ones who interact with the community every day.  Now to the Board of Ed – you have to remember something – I used to remind you of this.  Sure, it’s your job to represent the students, to get the best deal for the kids – that[s your job but you have to remember, you were elected by all the voters of Avon, not just the parents, not just the education community, you have to represent the whole Town.  When you go into budget review, you have to answer to the whole town, not just to your community who you see every, who you work with every day.  You have to think about the other people out there.  If you, I think you’ll find you get better results.  You took a voluntary cut of $275,000 and frankly the Board of Finance accepted it.  I feel it would have been better to take a little bit more.  If you look at past cuts, that was rather modest.  You volunteered for a modest cut, got out of the room and thought you were ahead and then the budget went down and you got hit harder.  Frankly, I would not have hit you quite so hard if I were still Chairman.  So, there’s something wrong with your strategy; there’s hardball politics.  We got the votes this year, we don’t have to take a cut – that doesn’t work.  You have to take a cut, you have to compromise.  If you think you can get enough votes to win, then next year the group will get their vote up and they’ll win.  Somewhere along the line there has to be a meeting of the minds and we’ve lost it.
Now, one more – the Board of Finance.  Did you really think that that budget was going to pass?  I’m sitting here in my living room and I could see it wasn’t going to make it.  You’ve got to do better on your compromise.   When you people split 4 to 3, you can’t expect the community not to split.  If you can’t come out 6 to 1, if you can’t get a good solid majority with the 7 of you – these are good men and they do their homework and they are experienced, if you can‘t work it out you can’t expect the community to work it out.  I say to you, you’ve got to negotiate a little bit better.  The $500,000 from Surplus, I think that was a good move.  A revaluation is a very traumatic thing – I’ve lived through three of them and the only budget I ever had go down was in a revaluation year.  Revaluation is traumatic – taking $500,000 from Surplus to soften the tax rate was a good move, but remember – what are you going to do next year?  You can’t keep doing that – it’s a one shot deal and it does give relief, but it should not affect the cuts.  The cuts that were made through the years on the Board of Ed and on the Council, they represent a trend; they’re not there just to lower the tax rate.  True, they do lower the tax rate but they control the budgets of the agencies.  So, if you cut the Board of Ed budget down from 7 to 5, what you’ve done is reduce the rate of growth and over time, that’s going to make a tremendously difference.  So the $275,000 cut was rather a small cut in the total budget based on previous times.  Don’t you read those Charts any more, they showed the amount of the cut every year, you could lay it out and see who we’re doing?  You’ve got to have some guidelines.  Also, does anybody talk about the turnover rate in the Board of Ed budget? and in the Town budget?  That’s where the savings come from.  That’s what make these people able to stand these cuts.  I don’t think  you’re doing that any more.  I used to fight with Gus Penna all day long to get that number out of him.  When we got that number out – you can get that from Gary – he’s very cooperative.  That will help you, give you a guideline. Thos are all just suggestions.  Remember, when the three Boards get together, you’re not working on a compromise between the three boards, that’s what you’ve been doing.  You’ve got to get a number that the citizens want, not what the three boards want.  The three boards walk out of there smiling, we didn’t get hurt to bad this year.  That’s not the way it’s going to pass.  It’s that group of voters that have to like the compromise.  With that said, I thank you for your time and I hope you listened.  I may not have the answers but as a concerned citizen I’m trying to stop this business
of budgets going down every year.  That’s not good for any of us.  Even those of you who don’t like the budget, make yourselves heard in the budget process, not in the voting booth.  I think we should turn this back to these boards and hope that they’ll give us a good budget and then genuinely support it.  I thank you for your time.
        
Mr. Harrison – Thank you very much.  You have proven once again the extreme value to the town for your many years of public service.  I think maybe you’ve brought a little whiff of fresh air that we all needed to hear, all three boards.  Frankly the people sitting in the room, too needed to hear it.  I’m sure the people on all three boards will take your words to heart and try to do the best we can.

Chris Atiyeh, 15 Woodhaven Drive:  For 20 years.  I’ve been an electrical contractor in the Farmington Valley for about 10 years and I’ve a responsibility to my business to keep it up and running.  So if I’m not fiscally responsible, I’m not going to provide for my employees, it’s pretty tough.  All I want to say is in the private sector, if you oversell – you won’t sell.  If you provide a fair and reasonable deal from the start, you’ll sell.  It’s absolutely no different here.  Thank you.

Susan O’Connell, 123 Juniper Drive:  I’ve been a resident of Avon for almost 9 years and hope to be here until the day they bury me in Avon; it’s become our Town.  I’m also proud to report in another month, I’ll be an empty nester.  I come here tonight because over the past few months there’s been many facts and many manipulations of figures about this budget process, about the overall meaning of the budget process.  I see from the handouts on the table tonight, in no areas is that more true than in the area of compensation of personnel in the school district.  There are a couple of things, my life has been working with numbers and with programs and looking up the facts about compensation given Avon teachers.  Now compensation is a pretty hard thing to look at because in my opinion, nobody pays me enough for what I do.  But the guy I took my car to at the shop today, he got far more than he deserved.  A couple of facts – for a new teacher, a young person just out of school, with a Bachelor’s Degree in education, coming to Avon, the starting salary is $40,685.00.  What we also need to look at, however, is that the maximum pay for a teacher with a Master’s degree, 30 years of experience, is about $77,000.  I ask anyone in this room, either professional who are still working or retired professionals, how many people did you work with who had graduate degrees in their field and more than 30 years experience were making less than $77,000 in this State.  It doesn’t happen.  You have a sheet in front of you that says Avon’s teacher salaries are way out of whack.  I would submit to you that it does not.  Because of the salaries that Avon teachers get, I get experienced teachers for my children, I get  men in the class rooms.  I’ve never lived any place that had the number of men in the class rooms.  Do you know what difference that makes to son?, with his achievements?  The other way to look at this is in terms of … it used to be in 1960 in New England, the way town’s set their payment to the teachers was to determine whether or not that the salary they were giving to the person could either allow that person to purchase a home in town or the town would give them a home.  The idea behind that was they wanted the teachers to live in town.  You wanted your teachers to reflect the values of the community.  You wanted teachers to be one of you.  I would submit to you that even at the top of the scale of $77,000 a year, with a median home costing well over $300,000, that you could not purchase one.  Someone with 30 years experience, moving into this town could not afford even to pay rent at the low end of the real estate.  One other point – it has become in vogue in the business community about salaries, is about the outcome they achieve.  We hear it in “no child left behind”, you only pay teachers for what they achieve.  In my line of work I have contracts, I get paid for what I achieve.  Let’s look at what our teachers achieve.  The handout from Avon Schools states in 1980 Avon High School sent less than 60% of kids to college; at this point we are sending better than 83% of our kids to college.  We are sending them to the most prominent colleges in the country and they are going to those schools with scores that are well …  We have our artist programs performing at Carnegie Hall in New York City, we have our kids winning international competition, we have our acting students being asked to go to some of the finest conservatories in the country.  If you don’t believe it, is come to Senior class night see the quality, come to the concerts and hear kids sign music that most adult choirs won’t try.  Then I want you to tell me that these teachers haven’t earned what they get.  Thank you.

Kimberly Durham, 25 Stillbrook Rd.  The Board of Education, I don’t think they have stressed enough although they’ve done an amazing job holding public hearings, that we keep hearing that’s not making their information public.  I don’t know how many hearings they want.  I know I went to quite a few hearings, Town Council likewise.  These guys do a great job trying to get the word out.  I’m sorry it’s not been successful.  Let’s talk about teacher’s salaries – lets talk competition.  There was a letter to the editor commenting on salaries for the high school principals, how the Board of Ed would like to raise the compensation.  In that same issue of the Hartford Courant, was an advertisement from Simsbury who is hiring an elementary principal for more than we’re paying our high school assistant principals.  That’s not competitive.  This doesn’t look right.  I have a friend who is moving to Avon, she’s moving from West Hartford to Avon.  She has one child and says the budget increase in West Hartford is 15% and she doesn’t even have a vote on it.  We’re complaining about our taxes and in reality we don’t have a lot to complain about.  I think the Board of Ed is doing a great job.  We have good teachers, we have good schools, I’m proud of our Town.  I’m very disappointed to hear the arguments against this budget.  I’d like to see our neighbors vote for this budget, again.

Allan Reiskin, 25 Highwood Drive:  I’ve been here for six years.  I think there are a number of problems that are affecting the votes and why they get turned down.  Some of it relates to lack of information and a lack of understanding of what the issues are.  I don’t think it’s a matter of us against them in terms of education.  I think everybody wants good schools, everybody wants opportunities for their kids.  Throwing money at the schools doesn’t mean there’s quality education.  I suspect that the per-pupil expenditure in the City of Hartford is much higher than it is in the Town of Avon, but I don’t see people running to live in the north end of Hartford.  I think that by saying if you don’t support the budget you don’t want good schools and you’re interested in supporting the children.  I think that causes decisiveness.  I think the Town Council is also a little misleading, we always hear we have to do it because our Bond Rating will go down or it will cost to have a second referendum, if you don’t do this you won’t have money to invest.  I see that the Town invested $200 M they had in their health fund.  By having it there early and investing it doesn’t always generate more money.  For the last few decades I’ve been buying municipal bonds and I buy them from Canton and Avon and Simsbury including towns that have lower bond ratings than Avon.   There is not a big difference in the yield of the bonds.  Towns that have lower bond ratings buy insurance.  I think the issue of having to keep a huge surplus or our bond rating will be damaged and it will cost a lot more money, is false; it’s not true.  Some of the information, if you want people to react to these things, you have to give them the right facts and figures, give them the numbers on  how much extra it will cost if we go from AAA to Aaa and how much does it cost for bond insurance.  I think people are being deprived.  The issue of revaluation, there is a serious flaw that is very punitive to a large number of people.  It’s unfair.  It’s not reasonable to expect people to be very supportive under these conditions.  

Charlie Kilgore, 66 Burnham Road:  I built this thing (the podium) so I thought I’d get an opportunity to use it.  I’ve lived in Avon for 58 years.  What I have to say will not make or break our budget process, but it was motivated by what I recently read in our newspaper.  When I came to Avon, my reason for coming to Avon, it was a small town that gave us an opportunity to do things for ourselves.  It was a pretty town and it still is a real pretty town and I like it.  I built our first home on a dirt road without the aid of power tools or electricity.  We had six children who went through the Avon school system; they’re all off on their own, doing well and they’ve been a credit to us and we’re proud of them.  I’m sure there are many families in this audience who can say the same thing.  I’ve never objected to anyone coming to Avon to live.  However, I have many times objected to their wanting to bring these far away places with them.  Hundreds of people over the years, through volunteerism, sacrifice and hard work made this town what it is.  Recently, we were referred to in the press as being ill-educated.  Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m ill educated and very proud to be considered a member of that group.  Also in the press we were told that if we can’t afford to pay the taxes, we should move out of town.  That, to me, is an insult.  One of the reasons for my being up here tonight on hearing that insult is worthy of a public apology.  I would hope that our budget people will be able to come up with a workable budget without increasing our taxes.  However, I have faith in the people I elect and of course, will accept whatever they come up with but my suggestion is that they come up with a workable budget without increasing taxes.  I hope they do not use cutting out maintenance, and delay everything else until next year.  Thank you ladies and gentlemen.

Jennifer Woolfberg, 25 Woodhaven Drive:  I voted yes in the first referendum and I intend to vote yes in the second.  I’ve lived in Avon for 15 years and one of things I’ve been most proud of in the past has been our sense of community and the resources we’ve provided for all of our residents.  However, I’m not so proud any more.  I pulled out a letter my husband and I wrote to the Hartford Courant on May 29th last year and unfortunately these thoughts still ring true a year later.  We said “we propose that our town leaders no longer wait to hear public opinion once a year during the budget hearings and workshops.   They should be proactive.  We suggested public forums televised on local Cable access be held throughout the year to talk about Avon’s overall plans for land use, housing, open space, recreation, historic preservation, the environment and economic development.  Leaders should invite town, State and Federal representatives into our community to talk about why town government can’t ask for money from developers to support the schools and what the impact of binding arbitration is on our Union contracts.  Where is our mandated Plan of Development?  We are in desperate need of strong leadership from the Town Manager and the Town Council.  If you don’t provide that leadership, we will continue to live in a Community divided.  I will continue to be not so proud.”

Steve Russo, 71 Kingsbridge:  I stand here as I did about a week ago when Mr. Harrison had the Board of Finance Workshop.  Another gentleman got up like this one did and mentioned a letter in the paper.  Sir, I apologize to you.  I was a co-author of that letter.  That letter was mostly misconstrued, that was not how I meant that letter.  First of all, I never did mention Senior Citizens, people who are on fixed incomes or anything like that in the letter.  It was taken as a slur by senior citizens and people on fixed incomes.  At the Board of Finance Meeting, I got up and explained that my intention in the letter was that I though there were a lot of people in Avon who were really having difficulty in making taxes and that this referendum for this budget was beyond them being able to pay.  In that instance, in the business that I am in, I’m a mortgage broker, I help people make these decisions every day.  I’m licensed in 50 States, I deal with people in foreclosures, bankruptcies, many people in dire situations that can’t afford their homes.  There are options for these people whether it’s to refinance them, for older people to have a reverse mortgage or to perhaps move to another community, which I myself did.  I even said at that meeting that I moved to Avon, I downsized from a $750,000 home on Long Island to a home for just under $400,000 in Avon last year.  My taxes in New York were $15,000 plus on my home in New York.  The new owners are now paying $18,000 also because of reassessments.  There are people that are dying to move into any homes that become available in the Town that I moved into.  I made a logical decision; I had come up here when I was first married in 1987; we visited Canton, we bought an antique table there, we fell in love with the Valley then.  Because of family circumstances, we were never able to build our dream home in this area until last year.  I had a chance to move to any area in the country that I wanted because I can work from home or a small office.  My main office is in Virginia and in New York.  We moved here with our four children and the main reason we came to Avon over Simsbury or over West Hartford or over Canton was because it is a beautiful town and the schools.  It’s no secret that Avon’s school district has the best report card in the State.  Can you compare it to Simsbury?  I guess so.  I have a friend who recently moved here and wrote to me that he chose Avon because the mill rate in Simsbury was way too high and Avon is lower and he’s going to vote No on this budget because he doesn’t want it to go up to what Simsbury was.  If you were at the Board of Finance last week, there was more of a sense of a community feeling.  We were trying to work together.  Mr. Gugliotti mentioned that we do have one of the lowest mill rates in the Valley.  You get a lot of value for your money, here.  I can understand from residents wanting an advantage of the schools that don’t have any children or grand children in the schools.  I would want my taxes to be as low as possible especially if I was on a fixed income.  I stood on that corner on referendum day with my “yes” sign because I felt that the Town and the Board of Ed deserve every dollar we can possibly give them.  The gentleman that just came up mentioned about letting the bond rating slip.  That’s absurd; that’s the first sign of erosion.  Do we want our town to erode?  I don’t think so.  My first sense in writing was I felt there were people who really couldn’t afford to live here and I say all 4,000 plus voters coming out that day – I saw their faces and I have to say it isn’t a divided community on the referendum.  There were a lot of senior citizens that came up and gave me the thumbs up.  There were a lot of young people who had kids in the schools that gave me thumbs down.  I think that’s where there needs to be – just all of the people who had kids in the school go out and vote to support the schools.  There are problems supporting this referendum, but it’s not there.  There is not a lot of communication.  When I first moved here last year, I had an opportunity to vote in the first referendum – I didn’t even know what it was.  I saw people waving signs.  I think there are a lot of new …

Mr. Harrison, Steve could you maybe wind this down?

Mr. Russo:  I think we need to have more discussions during the year.  Maybe there are seniors who live in condos that feel their taxes are going too high and if they really are in need, the town gives tax credits.  If you earn under $30,000 a year of earned income.  What I pay in social security taxes, probably gives what they take out of my pay, I have no guarantee that I’ll even get anything.

Mr. Harrison:  Steve, I think you’ve offered your apology…….I don’t want any speaker treated any differently from any other speaker.  

Mr. Russo:  Also, the Hartford Courant and the people who are on the no vote side used my letter as a platform just to solidify their no vote.  Also, the reporter from the Hartford Courant was actually at a Board of Finance meeting, she never made any mention of my apology.  I think this gentleman wouldn’t have got up if she did.   I don’t think that was fair.  There was one sign out there that said “dollars do not make scholars”.  It may be right, but dollars make musicians, dollars make artists, dollars make sports people and also make leaders in our community.  Teachers are professionals that deserve to be compensated.  They have special education requirements that say to them that now you have to fall in line with the public because the public sector is ………  Maybe five or ten years ago they …..

Mr. Harrison, Steve, I’ll give you a chance to come back, all right?  You have used up a considerable amount of time.  It was not easy for you to stand up to apologize  (no it wasn’t) if you yield the floor now to somebody else, I’ll give you a second chance.  Thank you

Sara Ray: I believe that Avon’s Veterans and long term residents are a wonderful asset to our community and it saddens me (started to cry and had another person read her statement) to see the division that’s happening over the budget issues.   I know that when I’m speaking, I’m speaking for most of the young families who have school age children.  We are a town divided and we need to come together and reconnect.  How do we all live together and work for a common goal, a town that is united by it’s …  We want to see good schools and town services that meet the growing needs of our community.   These young families do have a commitment to Avon and plan to stay here for the long term, raise our children here and retire here.  Many of our young family volunteer their time to Avon citizens, the senior center and school and our commitment is to helping to keep our town a family town.  The Board of Education’s requested budgets have been cut nearly three million dollars over the past three years.  Who has suffered as a result of the budget being cut?  Our children, our future leaders will suffer.  Our schools, contrary to some opinions are working on bare bones.  We invite any senior citizen to come into the schools and see some of the things that are happening.  The deterioration of the bathrooms at the Middle School, the books that are used to teach at the Middle School, Ronald Reagan, possibly his first election – that’s a part of history program.  There are a lot of things that people are not aware that are happening at the schools.  We can’t keep cutting a budget that’s been already cut too much.  There is no frivolous spending going on.  We are counting staples, paper and post it notes to try to make it stretch to the end of the year.  A lot of schools ran short last year on supplies and had to go out and buy them themselves.  Parents had to offer to bring things in.  Many guidance programs have already been cut and it appears more are on the chopping.  Over the years, every year, the schools requested budgets are cut/slashed.  We have had exponential growth in our schools, it’s something you really need to evaluate, especially starting in 1989 to 1999, we only had increases of 1% to 2% in our tax rate.  It is time to catch up.  We moved here because of the education of our children.  Just to wrap up, I know there’s a lot of talk about teachers’ salaries.  These are a separate issue and they are not going to change regardless of whether we vote yes, or no.  What I’d like to say is please support our town, our kids and our future and vote yes on June 7th.  Support this current budget.  The Board of Finance, the Board of Education and the Town Council have worked very hard to come up with a fair budget first time around.  Now we’re voting again on a much lower budget number, with a disproportionate burden being place once again on the Board of Education’s budget.  It will directly affect the children.  Please let us not allow the budget to be cut again.  All of Avon’s citizens should rally behind our elected officials and support this new budget for the good of every one in this town.  Please vote yes.

V. Santos, 63 Meadow Ridge:  What structure adjustments could we implement in our town to allow us to live within our means.  I mention this in relational also to the April 7th Courant editorial.  We didn’t believe the Courant for once.  They mentioned that town officials must make the tough decisions in order to gain voter confidence.  There seems to be a resistance to change.  There were some suggestions made earlier about specific measures that can be taken.  If you don’t like what you’ve heard, then please, please, figure it out yourselves.  If you don’t like what we tell you, then please tell us what you can do so that we can afford to live within our means.  I just need to understand, what is the statutory basis for withholding revenue items from the budget.  If you can help me understand that and reconcile that with Sec. 7344 of the General Statutes which require that all items of revenue must be included in the budget to reduce the amount of expenditures and to reduce the amount of taxes that are levied on the citizens.  

Linda Merlin, 48 Highgate Dr.:  I guess I’d like to talk about salaries because the salaries are always under attack.  When I see papers saying Avon salaries are out of control, Avon spending still out of control, it concerns me that some of the information doesn’t seem to get through no matter how many times it’s explained that the paraprofessionals do a lot of work.  The Vice-Principals at the schools, most of their jobs are connected with federally and state mandated programs that are neither federally or state funded.  There is nothing that can be done about that.  Voting down the budget doesn’t save any cost in that area and yet people still want to know why we have so many of these teachers.  There’s no choice to the Board of Ed, it has to face this situation.  I think it’s important to reiterate that and if you vote down this budget, that won’t change.  Someone on the Board of Ed at a past Board of Finance workshop explained that with the three year contracts, these were not out of control negotiations.  They were average in the State and not at all out of control when no one knew what the economic situation would be currently, just like no one  who negotiated any of our contracts three years ago.  I think it’s important to realize that and it’s important to know that when those negotiations come up, the Town will do it’s best to make reasonable contracts under current financial situations.  This will have no effect on existing contracts and again, voting the budget down doesn’t solve that problem.  The other point I wanted to make is directed at the Board of Finance in your consideration in the next two days.  The average increase in the town population is around 15% over the last 10 years or so and the average increase in the school population has been around 50%.  This indicates there is a need within the schools that is greater than the town as a whole.

Bob Creer, 518 Country Club Road:  I think it’s healthy that we have this kind of discussion as a community; I’m sorry people think it devisive.  There are republicans, democrats, there are independents and I think that’s what this whole referendum is about.  We didn’t have this before and now we do have it.  I think it’s a healthy situation.  Everybody has an opportunity to speak here and I hope that you do.  I appreciate the time to speak, myself.  I was with Steve there with the sign that said vote no, with his vote yes.  I have to say a lot of people said to me as I stood there, why don’t you move to Florida, get out.  I would never think of saying something like that to my neighbor, or anyone else.  I don’t know where that’s coming from but I didn’t think that was appropriate.  The other thing I’d like to say is that I would like to see your presentation a little less slanted to telling me that I better vote for this referendum this time because it’s going to cost me more money the next time.  I think that’s really slanting the presentation from the board and I feel a little beat down that if I choose to vote no I should be able to make that choice without being told literally from your point that’s how I shouldn’t vote – I really should vote yes.  I think if you guys, meaning all the boards, did their job as Bud said earlier, then we would vote yes, the majority.  I hope you will take that into consideration.

Carolyn Ostafin, 17 Old Kings Road.  I, too, am disturbed by comments like you just mentioned, but I’ll give you a flip side.  I’ve a daughter that graduated two years ago from Avon High, she works two jobs and she goes to school full time at UCONN, West Hartford.  She came between those jobs and school to vote.  A senior citizen went up to her and said I recognize you from one of the restaurants you work at – I bet we’re voting on different sides.  My daughter didn’t say anything.  I brought my kids up as my parents brought me up.  There’s a couple of things you don’t discuss with people; one is religion and the other is voting and politics.  My daughter didn’t say anything but that person said to a 20 year old girl, well, I’m glad my vote cancelled out yours.  When she came home and told me that I was ticked.  I was disgusted, I didn’t bring up my daughter that.  I told my mother and she was disgusted.  It’s on both sides.  Two years ago I said I hate to see this us against them and I blame this on the school system.  I’m a stay at home mom and I try to help out any way I can.  Dr. Kisiel, there have been a lot of questions on your paras, what your vice principals do, I have a kid with special education needs.  He is doing outstanding.  I can’t tell you – if you met my son and how he came here as a third grader and how he is doing now as a 9th grader – it’s incredible the amount of work that these specialized people put forth for children in our community.  These children can’t help that they are special ed; they have a learning disability or they have some other physical disability or whatever the problem, it’s not their choice.  My question is if there is so many questions about what these professionals do, can we invite these people who don’t know what they do, the vice-principal, the principal, the learning disability teachers, can they shadow them for a day.  It’s ridiculous, I’m telling you first hand that these people definitely earn their pay checks.  Dr. Kisiel, is it possible to do this to clear any misunderstandings.

Dr. Kisiel:  Listening to the conversation this evening, there’s obviously a lot of misunderstanding, misinformation from people who went to school at a different time, when special education didn’t exist.  Clearly we have not received the support that we were guaranteed by Federal legislators for special education.  We have continued not to get support from our State legislators to help us offset some of the incredible costs of sending children to other districts for programs that we simply can’t provide.  It might be helpful in this community, maybe if the Board, myself and the people who work in special education, ought to invite the community into at lease a forum to understand what’s it like and what do we service and why do we have these paraprofessionals.  What services do they provide, why do we have to have a one-to-one para working with a child?  Those are very good questions and I think it’s time that we take the opportunity to go beyond the budget and start to talk about the programs that affect our budget and your taxes.  I made the suggestion to Mrs. Roell already and I’ll make the suggestion to our administrators that once we get over this process, we open the opportunities for folks in our community to get a greater understanding of what it’s like to be in school today and more importantly, what’s the special education program all about.  I guarantee we’ll provide that for you.

Mr. Harrison:  Thank you.  I think that’s something that all three boards have been alluding to, that we have not collectively been doing the job of getting all the information out there.  I think we had much more information this year with the web site and hearings, but there is obviously a gap.  You may still feel the same way you do now, after you learn what they are doing, but at least you’ll be making a decision based on fact and not just reacting to something we don’t know.

Sam Levine,  98 Cotswold Way:  Tank you all for the time you’ve towards this budget, we really appreciate all your efforts.  My only concern now is after reflecting on the 680/42 cut, when the Town Council went into another room to make a decision on how they’d make that cut, it took them about 15 minutes to make those decisions.  We currently have a Board of Ed that’s really struggling with having to make those cuts so they least impact on our children, I ask you all to reconsider how you split, knowing as how there’s only been a 15% growth in town but a 50% growth in the schools.  Another factor would be to maybe consider the portion of the budget they actually comprise, whether or not

Mr. Harrison:  If you factor in, Sam, the debt service on the bond issues for school construction, it’s about 68% of tax revenues support the education side of the budget.

Ms. Levine:  So if you have 68% vs  the balance, if you take those into consideration to come up with those cuts it took only 15 minutes and basically none of those cuts are going to impact anybody in the community, the fact that the Board of Ed is still struggling with  it’s numbers and how it’s going to impact the children.  Try to come up with a way that will impact the children the least, the fact that 50% of the growth is in the schools and only 15% in the Town and there is a disproportionate share of budget cuts placed on the Board of Ed for the 2nd year in a row, I ask you to reconsider the budget as presented and I ask you to consider the children in the community and thank you very much.

Florence Stahl, 2 Sunset trail:  Congratulations to everybody who’s still here.  Although, Mr. Chairman, I thank you for thanking me, really it’s the Avon Taxpayers Association, not me.  It was very interesting to hear Dr. Herrmann speak tonight.  It’s been a long time.  I served with Dr. Herrmann on the Board of Finance for many years.  I agree, in those years we appealed to that great middle section and that great middle section passed the budget.  Why?  Because the budgets were reasonable back then but now we have spending that is escalating beyond the net Grand List and what happens is that as it compounds and becomes the floor for the next year, the spending is escalating at rates that we cannot sustain.  That was not true when Dr. Herrmann and I were on the Board of Finance.  Spending is increasing at too great a rate.  I also want to say that we’re pulling farther and farther away, again, from the net Grand List growth.  The mill rate deduction that we are facing with the second referendum is .43, that’s less than 2cents on a dollar.   That’s the reduction as a result of the overwhelming “no” vote, less than 2 cents on the dollar reduced.  Not good enough – not enough.  I also would like to say to the Board of Education to please, before you cut programs, sports, library books, would you please look at your personnel costs, at your administration costs before you do that?  Please do that before you go to the children, don’t go to the children first.  Also to the Board of Education, when negotiations come up this summer, would you please advocate that those be open proceedings?  Would you please advocate that you hire a trained negotiator, preferably from the private sector?  And please will you tell us who is on the negotiating committee.  I thank you for staying here this late and that’s about all I have to say.  Thank you very much.

Joseph Spears, Burnham Road:  A couple of observations.  If you talk about the budgets being less than 5% and one chart shows 6.6% increase on the average home, I look at my street and one other.  On my street the tax increase is anywhere from 12% to 21% and even with this slight deduction we’re still talking about a tax increase of 13%.  This is more than double.  We’re talking about a 13% increase in taxes and yet you’re talking about 5% increase.

John Salerni, 78 Cold Spring Road:  There is one thing that I’m really confused about.  I keep hearing people criticizing the assessor’s office, the Board of Finance or something about this revaluation, you’re talking conspiracy and all kinds of nonsense.  As I understand it, we hire an appraisal firm, they appraise houses for market value.  Some people apparently have had their house appraised at a fair market value for some number of years and pay an appropriate amount of taxes.  A fair number of people in town have been paying on a market value that was not realistic, in other words, their house was under-valued.  For many years people were not paying, theoretically, your fair share of taxes based on the amount of money you could sell you house for.  The people really who have a reason to complain are the people who have been paying at or above market value for many years, while other people are paying lower.  I keep hearing a lot of complaints that somehow you are being hit with this big tax bill, it’s unfortunate, but you can also look at it from the angle that you have been underpaying for a number of years and now you’re being asked to pay what’s based on the fair market value of your house.  Thank you.

Lorraine Ratkiewich, 109 Rosewood Road:  I think this could be cleared up before the dissenters who are on fixed incomes, and they are very fixed.  Our percentage of
increase has gone down, down, down and reverse mortgages only work if I outlive the proceeds of my mortgage, I get lost, or die.  That’s the real story.  There’s only just so much money for us.  The taxes are going up and you folks are saying get out of town, what are you doing around here.  Most of the people who are proponents are very comfortable with the tax increase.  They have children.  When I had children, I had 5 of them, I could see that but then we had Oliver Thompson, Bea Murdock, Mr. Herrmann, and they were very kind and cognizant that we couldn’t have everything.  They were wonderful budgeters.  Now we have double income families, we have people who come from out of town who want bargains in education.  Everyone knows Avon is a bargain, we’re giving almost a private school education.  Let’s find a middle ground.  I’m not opposed to a tax increase although my increase went up 2% and it came down 1% because of health costs.  Now taxes are going up = do you want me to die or leave town, is that the answer we have to look forward to?  Find answers, work a little harder and God bless Oliver Thompson, Bea Murdock for taking care of us for so long.

Kathy Zirolli, 76 Tamara Circle:  I’d like to qualify a comment that Avon provides a private school education, is not accurate.  I have a son in private school, I pay over $15,000. for him to attend and to help us with a child situation that we’re in.  He is getting, he’s 5, he’s getting exposure to music, to art, to gym twice a week for a long period of time, Spanish, French, the list goes on.  His education is incredible, but we pay for it.   My daughter is at Pine Grove School and the way I plan to supplement and assist is I go down there and volunteer frequently and get whatever I can.  I also have my mother volunteer.  There is a concerted effort to try to help raise the education of the public school system.   We have reduced the enrichment, we pay our share for a foreign language, we pay for everything.  By the way, at Renbrook, they asked me for extra donations because they say they are not getting enough money for the teachers so we are asked to make extra donations.  I think we need to be realistic when we say that private and public education is the same.  They are very different.  Regarding teachers’ salaries, I do feel that I would like to better understand binding arbitration and I would appreciate more education on that.  I will say that we didn’t get a merit raise where I work, but I got a bonus and it was a nice bonus.  To my knowledge there’s no bonus awards to the teachers.

Steve Russo, you can be the wind up.  (because of people leaving there was too much
Interference on the tape:  I just want to say that on the day of the referendum, the gentleman that was standing next to me, the person to said to him “move to Florida” was a senior citizen.  It was the same fellow that gave me thumbs up and said to my grand kids not to divide the town between the elders and the younger people.  I think that’s wrong.  I think from what I say, 4,000 plus people that came and went, there was a lot of respect on both sides.  I hate to keep bantering about the division between the old and the young.  We know that the younger people have children that need to be educated and we know that very few of the older people are really struggling.  I say many, many older people driving in $100,000 cars giving thumbs down.  It’s really just a matter of the dollar and what services you get for your dollar which is a natural thing a human thing.  I think we should try to come together and realize the importance of education for our children.  I’m a very active father in the school.  I’ve been to all my children’s classes, I help my children do homework to bring up the standard of their education even to the private schools.  I try to teach them different languages that I know.  I try to give them my expertise in math.  I was very good in math and science in school.  I try to pass that along.  There was a senior citizen that came up at the last town hearing that said he had the opportunity of his father being a chemistry teacher.  I think there needs to be more community involvement for all citizens in our education, at our board of education and at our schools.  

Mr. Harrison:  Steve, I hope you’re not going to respond to everybody who made comments.

Mr. Russo:  At the last Board of Finance hearing, he made a valid point.  I think it was you that said that all year long you’re asked by the kids to buy candy and meals and you buy everything and then it came time for …… and they charged you $1.00 or $1.50.  I would have walked out.  I think that seniors in the town should get special passes to come see the productions that these kids do.

Mr. Harrison:  Steve, could I exercise the prerogative of the chair?  We appreciate your point of view.  Thank you.

When our family moved here about 8 or 9 years ago, it seems to me there was a discussion going on in Simsbury about a tax arrangement that was being made for senior citizens where in fact the increases in taxes was not collected from senior citizens from low income.  Mr. Harrison, we have that program here in Avon.  This was a much higher income level; it wasn’t a rebate but they did not pay the taxes now but the increases were due when the home was sold.

What do you do for a child who wants to become a plumber, an electrician, a carpenter, a ditch digger or back hoe operator.  Do you provide any facilities for these kids?

Ms. Roell:  There are State vocational schools that children go to.  There’s one in Torringto, one in New Britain.  Different programs in different towns.

Does the Town pay for kids to go to these schools (Yes.)

Bob:  Is it true that if the referendum didn’t pass for whatever reason, and bill payment came, could you not send out bills based on the current budget?  No.

Mr. Harrison:  We cannot pay bills until the voters approve the mill rate.   The mill rate the voters approved last year expires on June 30th and we can’t set new tax bills until we have a new mill rate.  Thank you all very much.

The meeting adjourned at 9:50 P.M.

Attest: