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Board of Finance Public Hearing
April 7, 2008
1. CHAIR BOARD OF FINANCE: Thomas Harrison
Chairman Harrison: Good Evening. Welcome. This is the Board of Finance’s event of the year. It is our very own public hearing. We always look forward to this and look forward to hearing your views and thoughts and complaints and suggestions and whatever else you want to tell us tonight. For those of you who may not have been here before, the way this evening works, we will have a couple of opening things, then each of the Boards will have a slide presentation. The Board of Education and the Council will outline their budget requests and give some of the details and explain some of the issues that drove them to assemble the budget requests the way they’ve got them. Then the Board of Finance will present some slides and outline some of the
fiscal challenges that we face and give you some statistics and numbers that show where our revenues come from and where they are not coming from this year. Then we will have a session, for as long as it takes, for the public comment, questions, whatever. The way we do that is to raise your hand. We have two microphones. There is one up here in the front. It has a lectern, so if any of you have papers or notes that you think would be helpful with your remarks, you are more than welcome to come up and use the lectern. There is also a microphone sort of between the two sets of seats and you can use either one. But you do have to use the microphone because Alison, the clerk of our Board, is taping this and then will transcribe as verbatim as we can get it, so when you do speak, if you would be kind enough to give your name and address here in Town. That would make it easier for Alison. Inevitably, at the precise moment someone is
doing that, somebody slides a chair or 14 people cough, so we might not get everyone, but we do ask that when you speak, to give your name and street address. We will stay here as late as we have to. Everybody who wants to speak will be given the opportunity to do so. Because we have a large group tonight, the usual practice we follow is that in the first time you speak, we will try to ask you to limit your remarks to no more than roughly three minutes, give or take, and we ask you not to speak a second time until we think everybody who wants to speak gets a turn. But we will stay, as I said, as late as it takes. An in terms of speaking, we fully expect, as has been the tradition here, that this will be an adult conversation among friends and neighbors in a Town that we all love. We forbid booing, hissing, stamping of feet, anything like that. Whether you agree or disagree with the speaker, you will respect the speaker to say what’s
on his or her mind. And I will enforce that very strictly. If you are going to go three to three and a half minutes, and you look like you are just getting warmed up, I may ask you to take a break, think about it some more, and again, in fairness to others who would like to speak. The way we do this, like I said, everybody can speak, if you are simply going to say I agree with what the previous 12 speakers in a row said, you are welcome to do that, but realistically, if it’s just repetitious you don’t need to give the entire thing once again. We don’t make our decisions based on checking off how many boxes on this side or whatever. We are not discouraging anybody from speaking, but if it is just simply to be cumulative for points previously expressed, we respect that, but you don’t need to give the start to finish comments. That’s it in terms of the ground rules. What we will do is we begin all of our Board of
Finance meetings, we will open with the Pledge of Allegiance. So I would ask you all to stand.
Leads Audience in Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag
The Pledge of Allegiance was recited.
Chairman Harrison: Thank you. We will introduce the members of the Board of Finance. I am Tom Harrison. I am the Chairman of the Board and I am going to ask each of our members to introduce themselves starting with Brett.
Brett Esenlohr, Bill Hooper, Tom Gugliotti, Jim Speich, Catherine Durdan, Margaret Bratton.
Chairman Harrison: And Alison is our clerk. She works the hardest of anybody in this room probably, trying to transcribe these numbers. The first item of business involves a discussion by Dwight Johnson, our Town Attorney. Is Dwight here? Oh, I’m sorry Dwight. You came in a little bit late. Dwight is going to explain the legal procedures under State law and our Town Charter that pertain to the actual development of the budget process. Dwight, do you want to come up here or speak at the microphone?
Calls on Town Attorney, Dwight Johnson, to outline procedures of meeting and comments on budget process
Dwight Johnson: Thank you, Tom. Good evening ladies and gentlemen. Just a brief reminder of what we are doing tonight and then how the process will continue over the next couple of weeks. Tonight’s hearing is being held in accordance with the requirement of the Town Charter. The Charter requires this hearing so that any elector or taxpayer will have an opportunity to comment on the draft budget that is being presented to night. In addition as Tom said, prior to the public comment, you will receive some presentations from members of the Town Council and the Board of Education concerning the budgets as they have recommended them to the Board of Finance. Following tonight’s hearing, the Board of Finance will be meeting in a quote, workshop, with members
of the Town Council and the Board of Ed to review the recommended budget and the comments that where made tonight. At that meeting, which is scheduled for this Wednesday, April 9th, my understanding is that additional public comment will be allowed. If necessary, the Board of Finance will schedule a second workshop on Thursday, April 10th. After the public hearing and the workshops have been completed, the Board of Finance is required, again, under the Charter, to review the draft budget as it has been presented to them, and then they can make any changes that it deems to be, quote, desirable. The final result of this effort by the Board of Finance is to recommend a budget to the Annual Budget Meeting. The Annual Budget Meeting will be held on Monday, May 5th. After the presentation is made by the Town Officials at the Budget Meeting of the recommended budget, the meeting will be adjourned to the referendum.
That referendum is currently schedule for May 14th. It is at that referendum where the public will vote on whether to accept or to reject the budget. Avon’s Charter requires a majority vote to accept the budget and also states that fewer than 9% of the electoral of votes at the referendum, the budget is deemed accepted. If the budget is rejected, the Charter provides for two additional referendum based on subsequent recommendations of the Board of Finance. In the unlikely event, and I don’t believe it’s happened as long as I am aware, that the budgets were rejected at three separate referendums, then the Charter provides alternative approaches for the needs of the Town during the coming fiscal year and puts that responsibility on the Town Council and the Board of Finance. That is a summary of the process and good luck.
Chairman Harrison: Thank you Dwight. I want to expand upon one thing Dwight mentioned. Our deliberations and coming up with a recommendation will certainly reflect comments and remarks made here tonight, but it is not limited to that. We have received a lot of e-mails, a couple of letters and a number of people said that they would not be here tonight, but gave us there thought in e-mails, so we look at that too. In addition, we obviously live in the Town, so we have conversations with people. People usually stop me at Stop & Shop and give me a piece of their mind. It’s just not simply what people say here tonight. There is more to it tonight. For the people standing in the back, there are a lot of seats in the first several rows. If
you would like to sit down, don’t be afraid to come up. There are a lot of seats up here. Choice seats are going fast folks.
Calls upon Chair, Board of Education to present the proposed Board of Education Budget for the FY 2008/2009
Chairman Harrison: Alright, the way we work it now is we will open the floor to presentations by the two budget developing Boards. We alternate the sequence each year, and this year it happens to be the Board of Education’s opportunity to speak first and deliver their slides and material. So to accomplish that, I welcome Peggy Roell to come up.
Peggy Roell Presents Board of Education Budget
Peggy Roell: As Tom mentioned, there are seats up here so if some of the people in the back want to come up. Don’t make it too dark so I can’t see. Thank you, Tom. I would like to begin by introducing the other Board of Ed members that are here. Mike Eagan, our Vice Chairman and Chairman of the Budget Committee, Angela Shelton, our Secretary, Ken Notestine, Bill Stokesbury, Barbara Zuras, Bernadette Mayer, Doug Evans, Houston I don’t think is here. Also with us tonight is Superintendent of schools, Dr. Richard Kisiel, operating the computer, Assistant superintendent of schools, is Jody here? Yes, in the back Jody Goeler
and Director of Finance, Gary Franzi. Approximately 30% of the school district employees are residents of Avon and many of them are here tonight. So, if at this time, all of our Principles, teachers, and other Board of Ed members could just stand and be recognized. That would be great. Thank you for everything you do for our kids everyday and thank you for taking the time to come tonight. The Board of Education is required under Connecticut Statutes to “maintain good public elementary and secondary schools.” The challenge we as a Board face is balancing this legal obligation with what the community believes it can afford to pay, particularly since about 3% of the revenue for the Avon Public Schools comes from local funding. Hopefully you have all been able to learn more about the schools throughout the year by reading our quarterly newsletters. These newsletters you should get in the mail. The Board
believes that in order for our students to be personally and academically successful, they need to acquire and demonstrate the higher order thinking skills needed to compete in today’s global world. The success in meeting this goal is measured by results on state and national assessments, the caliber of schools that accept our graduating seniors, the success our students have in higher education, and the other personal successes that our students demonstrate in school activities and interests outside of school. We have many recent successes and I wanted to share a couple of them with you. We have 7 National Merit Finalists in the class of 2008. We have gotten acceptances to many top choice colleges and universities including most of the Ivy League schools, The Uberbots, the high school robotics team, recently won the regional competition and will be going to Atlanta next week for the international competition, the high school girls
basketball team won the Class M state championship, and many other successes that hopefully you have read about in the Avon Post, Avon Life and/or the Hartford Courant. The Board of Education, along with the administration, were guided by these goals which are not in any particular order as the proposed budget was developed and revised. The proposed budget supports a one year increase in projected enrollment of 88 students or 2.5% from 3,576 last year to projected 3,664 students next year, although 37 of those students are already here with us. As you can see, our actual Pre K-4 enrollment in October was 29 students more than projected and our high school enrollment was 22 students more than projected, while the combined Thompson Brook Middle School enrollment were 14 students less than projected. So fairly close considering the total numbers we are talking about. We believe that the continued housing development in town, along with sales of
homes by long-time residents, will continue to have an impact on our budget, and continued pressure on school space particularly at the elementary school level, although this long term growth at the elementary school level is not reflected in the most recent enrollment projections that we have received. The Board of Ed has formed a Facility Use Committee that, with significant input from the administration, is in the process of developing both short and long term options related to elementary school facilities. That Committee expects to be reporting back to the Board in either May or June. Consistent with prior years, we will not know how many students will actually be enrolling at each grade level until sometime in mid summer. The administration continues to closely monitor the projected enrollments at all of the schools, including the perceived overcrowding situation at Roaring Brook School. A small group of families have expressed interest in a voluntary
transfer program, if necessary. This continued growth in enrollment affects our salary and benefits costs by requiring us to hire additional teachers, both for regular and special education, it affects our transportation costs, it affects our utility costs as we have to add additional space, and it affects the amount of instructional materials we need to purchase each year. This chart shows the historical information from State Dept of Education website. It’s a year old and it’s the most recent comparative information that is available. It’s most interesting to me because while it shows that we continue to have increased enrollment, about 515 over that 5 year period, some of our neighboring Towns, Simsbury actually showed a decrease in students and the other Towns have a lot less of an increase. Also our per student cost has increased as much as some of the other Towns over the last five years. This Chart shows the
same data but in graph form. As you might have read in our newsletter, the theme of this year’s budget is one of restoration, restoring items that were not adequately funded in school budgets in prior years, and preservation, preserving important programs that have led to a tradition of excellence in the Avon School system, which the community has come to expect and for which we are recognized. As a result, we believe, this budget reflects basic needs; proposed new items are very limited. I think I can safely say that none of the members of the Board of Education are excited about the prospect of having to pay a large increase in taxes next year, but hopefully after learning more about what is included in this budget you will see why we unanimously approved the proposed budget. We feel these monies are necessary to maintain the quality of our schools and to continue to prepare our students for success in life after they graduate from the Avon public schools. In our newsletter
there is a chart that summarizes the detail of the budget. The full detail is in the budget book, which is a 2 inch thick book that is available at the Board of Ed offices, town hall and the public library. In addition, Ken Notestine has prepared a web based “drill-down” program where you can see each of the 930 lines, in a much more condensed version on the web. And the next slide will give you the web address for it. There is a link on the front page of the school web site, you can also go there, and hopefully, if you take the time to go through these, you will see how the $44.5 million that we are requesting represents legitimate costs to operate the school system for next year. As summarized on this chart, there are six major categories of expenditures in the Board of Ed budget. Approximately 80% of the budget supports salaries for non Special Ed personnel, benefits for all employees and costs including salaries for special education. We currently have 25 children
receiving special education services out of district, which means that their needs are so great, we cannot teach them at our schools, and an additional 352 children or approximately 10% or our enrollment currently receive special education services within the district. These services range from speech therapy on a weekly basis to specialized, full day programs within our schools. The cost of Special Ed is an ever changing number. This current year, we had about $250,000 of unanticipated costs, and that’s before a new family that’s moving into Town with 3 Autistic children, that we just learned about last week. Each of these children require one to one paras and other Special Education services. So our $250,000 number is going to increase significantly. With 80% on these four categories, that leaves only 20% of the budget for everything else, including building operations and utilities, and we know what is happening with
utilities, transportation, instructional materials and other. I know that you can’t really read the detail, but this is a sample of a portion of the drill down program. It’s the chart that is also in the newsletter which you click and it goes into detail of what makes up each of these accounts. So, we encourage you to go on the website and look at this information. The remainder of the presentation will focus on three topics: major cost drivers, the superintendent’s budget reductions, and our efforts at avoiding and reducing costs. We will look at each of these major cost drivers. Starting in July we will be in year 3 of the 3 year administrator’s contract. Contract discussions with administrators will begin in June for a new contract. As most of you know, we will be in year 1 of the new teacher’s contract, which was settled in arbitration late last year. As a result of a favorable ruling for the Town
from the arbitration panel, the teachers will receive a general wage increase of 2.2% and will increase their contributions to health care insurance for the upcoming year. Avon’s teacher salary schedule is similar to all teacher salary schedules in the State, in that teachers are compensated for both experience and professional training. Step increases provide compensation for experience and lane changes provide compensation for earned college degrees. Such salary schedules are due in part to the Educational Enhancement Act of 1985. Of the 275 teachers and other certified staff, 177 or about 64% are at the top salary step and will receive the negotiated general wage increase of 2.2%. The other 98 or 36% who have less than 12 year of experience and are therefore not at the top salary step, will receive a general wage increase and a step increase. 11 teachers who earn a Master’s Degree or sixth level advanced degree, will also receive a
lane change increase. Teachers returning from leave represents the incremental difference between these teacher’s salaries and the lower salaries paid to substitutes during this year. The savings due to retirement of 2 teachers, have already been reflected in the proposed budget numbers. In 2005, prior to the initial high school referendum, it was estimated that the incremental additional operating costs in this upcoming year, associated with the expanded high school building, would be approximately $422,000. This number was included in the documents prepared and distributed prior to the referendum. The estimated actual column on this slide is the current estimate of these costs, the cost of operating an additional 63,000 square feet at the high school. As you can see, the two numbers are very close. Not bad for an estimate 3 year ago. In addition to these operating costs, as you will see on the next slide, there is an
additional $171,000 for technology for the new areas of the high school building. This is out of the technology, the computers and in other technology equipment for both the high school and for the remainder of the district. There is $171,000 remainder is $146,000. The proposed new personnel include 1.5 teachers at Roaring Brook School to maintain class sizes within contractual limits. A librarian for the high school. If you recall, we did not have this person this year because we don’t have a library right now, but as discussed at our last year’s budget, having a librarian at the high school is a requirement to maintain our accreditation. The budget also includes additional gym and health teacher at the high school, with new gym now have the space to give the junior and seniors the option to take a gym class. If you recall, during the referendum discussions, we talked about how students at the high school only get to take one
semester of gym freshman year and one semester of gym sophomore year. And that’s all the gym classes they currently get to take. So hopefully by having this additional teacher, more students will have the opportunity to stay active and physically fit. It also includes part time English, social studies and math teachers at the high school in order to maintain class sizes with increased enrollment. The current eighth grade class is our largest class to ever come into the high school and the second largest class in the district. Additional special Ed teachers at the middle school and one at the high school to meet the requirements of individual students Individual Education Plans of our special needs students. And with the additional 63,000 square feet of space at the high school, we need some additional custodians to clean the space and maintain it. Like those of us with natural gas in our homes are well aware, there has been a
significant increase in prices in the last year. Our schools are heated with natural gas. As you can see in this chart, the forecasted expenses for 2007/08 are approximately $345,000 over budgeted amounts $1,779,000 forecasted as compared to $1,433,000 causing a significant portion of our shortfall. There are also additional costs associated with the high school addition. The school district through its participation with the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities has avoided a portion of the high rate of increases in electricity over the last year. The district continuously looks for ways to reduce costs in order to improve our efficiencies. There is a joint committee of school and town personnel that meet regularly to continuously look for ways we can better work together in order to save all of the taxpayer’s money. Related to building operations but not included in the operating budget is the replacement of a boiler at Roaring
Brook, which Mr. Carlson will talk about. The current one is the original from 1962. And also that was in the Board of Ed budget, but is not included in the capital budget is a new roof for the original portion of the middle school. The Town is looking at different ways to fund the roofing project in the future. Health and medical insurance and dental insurance is a joint program between the Board of Ed and Town employees and currently consists of 1400 people. So, what has been happening in the private sector, the cost of health insurance has been increasing significantly. Since the Town and schools are self insured, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield passes on any increase in their administrative costs and claims expenses to the Board of Education and the Town. During the last several contract negotiations the employee contribution rates have been increased, which help offset some of the increased costs of insurance. We are currently
in the process of receiving bids for health insurance renewable and the Town and Board of Education together will be negotiating the final costs shortly. The district is entering the fifth year of a five year agreement with DATTCO for school bus transportation. Pursuant to the terms of this agreement, DATTCO has absorbed the increase in the cost of fuel over the term of this agreement. In order to keep costs within the 3% contract rate increase and avoid the cost of an additional bus, the administration continues to work with DATTCO to make sure the bus routes are as efficient as possible. The cost of an additional bus is approximately $60,000 per year and is not included in this budget. Even though enrollment has increased over 500 students during the term of this agreement, due to budget pressures, no additional buses have been added…which has resulted in lengthened bus routes, and more crowded buses, often to the dismay of some
parents. The district recently completed an agreement with the Canton Public Schools to share in the cost of the out-of-district transportation for some of our special education students who have to go to schools outside of our district. Again, this is another effort to control our costs. Instructional materials and equipment include purchases of text books, library books, lab equipment, etc. Most of the increase for instructional material and equipment is making up for the 20% reduction in purchases of materials this year that will come back to offset some of the budget overruns in special Ed and utilities. This is one of the examples of a restoration portion of the budget. The athletics, include increases in coach’s salaries of 2.2%, pursuant to new teacher’s contract and increases in official fees, and transportation. It includes year 2 of crew. In the first year, the crew program ate 100% of their cost and in year 2,
the Board of Ed agreed to pay 20% of costs. The only new program included in this budget is an indoor, winter track program for boys and girls with the addition of the new gym had the opportunity to provide many more students to stay active and participate in a team sport during the winter. The increase in grants and food service expenses are offset with increases in revenues that are in the Town budget. The reductions represent reductions in various accounts, which you can see if you look at the detail in the budget book. This is another way of looking at the proposed increase. This is what it will take to open our doors with our existing personnel, not taking into account the projected 88 student increase and also the new Special Ed personnel required to meet the program requirements determined at Planning and Placement Team Meetings. These teams are Federally and State regulated and mandated to insure that the learning
requirements for students with special needs are met. I would use the term “new” loosely here. New in that they are not in the current year budget. As previously discussed, these amounts include costs associated with opening of the Avon High School addition, new personnel for our increased enrollment, instructional materials and equipment that we didn’t purchase this year, our technology equipment for the high school, primarily for the high school expansion. This chart helps put in perspective where we’ve been since the budget process began last December when the school and district administration presented their budget proposals to the superintendent. This proposed budget was looked at in many ways by the administration, budget committee and full Board of Ed. As detailed on this slide, the superintendent reduced the principals fully justified requests by almost $1 million. Over the last five to six years, a
reorganization and reduction of district administration and a reduction in other personnel and programs were necessary to meet approved Town budgets. All this while our, again, while our enrollment increased over 500 students. Over the last 10 years, the Board of Ed has collaborated with both the town and other school districts to help reduce costs. This is a brief sampling of some of the programs. And these are discussed in more detail in the most recent newsletter you received. These are a sampling of the cost avoidance or savings measures that are included in the proposed budget. These are some of the new initiatives the administration and Board of Ed are exploring. The on line courses are opportunities for our students to pursue courses of study of personal interest that would not require hiring additional staff. I hope you have a better understanding of how the Board of Education proposes that our tax dollars be used in our
schools. Working together we can ensure that Avon remains the community we all know and love and that we each choose to live in. I will be happy to answer any questions later on. After tonight, do not hesitate to contact myself, any Board of Ed member or Dr. Kisiel with any questions or concerns about our proposed budget or anything to do with our schools. Thank you very much and thank you for coming.
Calls on Chair, Town Council to Present the Proposed Town Council, Sewer, Debt Service and Capital Improvement Budget for FY 2008/2009
Chairman Harrison: Thank you Peggy for, as always, a very very thorough and well presented detail of information of the challenges that the school system is facing. Next up for the rest of the budget, there are several other components besides the school portion, will be John Carlson. I will still point out to the standees, on both sides here, there are many seats left and you are more than welcome to filter in and fill in these seats. John, you want to come up now and tell us about the Town’s budget.
John Carlson Presents the Town Council Sewer, Debt Service and Capital Improvement Budget
John Carlson: Good evening and welcome to our annual meeting. I have several things that I would like to review with you this evening. Can everyone hear me in the back okay? Before preceding into the heart of my presentation, I would be remiss in not recognizing somebody who is with us this evening. He has been with us for 30 years on April 14th, and he is going to be quite irritated at me for pulling this off in front of everybody, but Phil Schenck joined us on April 14, 1978. And as well as being the most tenured Town Manager in the State of Connecticut, I believe he is the best. He is a representative of what this Town stands for, a sense of history, a sense of looking out for every individual. He is a tremendous tremendous asset to this Town
and I would ask you to join me in a round of applause. Like Peggy, I would also like to recognize the Town Council members, who are all here this evening, although I don’t know where exactly they are all sitting, so I will just say their name and ask that they stand when I recognize them. Bill Shea, who is our most tenured person on the Town Council, Mark Zacchio, the newest member Pam Samul, David Pena. In my presentation tonight, I am going to give you a brief overview of what we are requesting for budget increases and will talk about the major drivers of our budget increase, that is, the additional cost. I will highlight three departments, public works, the fire department and the police department. We will talk about the capital projects and the incurred debt that goes with that and some employment trends that we have had over the past few years as well. And then I will wrap it up with another brief slide that talks about the budget
request as well as the pending tax increase. I am remiss. I recognized Phil, there are two other Town employees, there are many here this evening, but I would like to recognize too, Blythe Robinson, who is running the computer and Peg Colligan, who will answer any questions that I get asked later. We have requested this year, you see the bottom right hand side, 7.74% increase. That is somewhat of a misleading number because the sewer increase that you see in there, that 54.11% increase is funded totally by sewer fees, so that does not come out of general tax revenues. I would ask that you focus on two items here. One is the Town, which is the top line item of 4.9% tax increase, or budget increase that we are requesting, and a capital improvement budget increase that we are requesting, which is the bottom line of 14.35%. The debt service is obligations that we have incurred by Town referendum in the past to support either the acquisition of
the land, building the schools, Town hall projects, that type of thing. That will be going up by 4.29% this year. Like all of use, we have felt a major impact at the gasoline pump and when we turn on a light or run the water. The Town is not different in that respect. $412,715 is a result of that. That is roughly 50% of the total increase that we are requesting. You go back to the previous slide, you will see that the Town is requesting $857,000 tax cut budget increase, $412,000 of that is on this page for costs, other than turning off lights, stopping the water from running, not filling up gas tanks in police cruisers or some of the public works vehicles, we cannot void this. Public Works is probably the area of Town that you see the most simply because that is the area that impacts you the greatest. Maybe the roads that you drive on, and we have 105 miles of road. I remember it wasn’t too long ago when I sat on the Board
of Finance that we were talking about 90 miles of road. We average 19 snow storms a year and we budget for 19 snow storms per year. Now I must say, we cannot predict, despite all of the Doppler Radar, when these are going to hit. And when they hit on a weekend, Sunday or a holiday, we are paying double time. And although it may feel like a year when we didn’t have a lot of snow, if the trucks were putting down salt and the other product that they use and it happens to be a Sunday, because that’s when it hit, we are paying double time on that day. So, it may not be a lot in terms of accumulation, but it can still cost us a lot. We maintain roughly 107,000 square feet of building space, 311 acres of fields throughout the time, and I want to highlight one other item because it’s been the item that we have put some money in over the years and that is emergency back-up generators. Some of this is mandated by State and Federal
law, and some of this is just being good stewards of our community. I would also like to compliment, and I don’t know if anyone is here from the Public Works Department, but we have had an acquisition program for a number of years for buying used vehicles when it makes sense to do so. We have recently purchased a wood chipper. Now this may seem like a small thing and it wasn’t a big dollar item, but it is evidence of how the Public Works Department was looking out there for something that came out on the market and we need to have one because when we have a wind storm and there is a lot of limbs down, you can’t rent one for that day, because everybody else is trying to do the same thing. So we did acquire a used one. We did not have one for the past couple of years and did not have one in service for the past couple of years, and that’s just one example of the fine work that they do. I spoke earlier about the rising fuel
costs. It seems to me that this picture tells it all. We have all felt it, and we incur this is two ways in the Town, the increase is a result of two factors, I should say. Yes, the rise in cost in fuel for both diesel and gasoline, but also we have added more roads. As we have more snow storms and the list goes on and on, this will rise up higher in utility costs for us. Another example where we felt a great cost increase was in our solid waste expenditures. This is driven by labor costs going up, trucking fees, and it is offset somewhat by permit sales. There are two lines on the graph. The line that is red on the top with the diamonds on it show our estimate cost through 2008. We expect it will cost us $512,000 for solid waste expenditures. On the other hand, the permits and fees that we charge, and we recently had a Town Council meeting where we had to increase these next year substantially, will raise $268,000.
So the difference of over $200,000 is being funded by general tax revenues. We are trying to keep up and close that gap somewhat. We have not raised the cost and fees in quite a number of years, but chose to do so this year because we were really in a pinch there in terms of increased costs. Our outline here are the top five capital projects of road improvements. $363,000 of the $825,000 in that top line item is for the growth overlay program. When we do not stay up with this, and this is the type of thing that can be cut out of the budget very easily without any of us seeing it this year or next year, but it comes back a number of years from now at a much higher cost because the result is your not maintaining the road with an overlay program, such as cracks, sealing and that type of thing, you end of having to rebuild the road, which costs you much much more. So $363,000 of the $825,000 is that. Road reconstruction, and we are going
to have to reconstruct one road, after, this is actually the fourth line down there, we go to road sewer extension. When we are done with the road sewer extension out there, we have to reconstruct the road, bring it up to current stand as well as rebuild it from the actual construction project. That is $250,000. We have some drainage problems on Chidsey Brook Road. That’s $100,000 of the $825,000. Secret Lake Road, where we are getting an engineering study over there, and that’s $75,000 there. So, that’s $825,000 and that’s a very large item, and one that’s easy to cut. Again, you won’t feel that difference today, but we will feel the difference down the road. Peggy talked earlier about the Roaring Brook School boiler replacement. It’s a 45 year old boiler. It’s never been replaced. It’s about one half of a million dollars to do that. But, if we don’t
do it and we get into a situation where it fails, and it is suspect, we could have a school without heat until we can get the right boiler in there and get things going again. That is not a situation we want to have. The Police communications center cost is $549,000. We have broken that out into two year. Where ever we can, we try to, all these capital items in the past, through cash. We are budgeting $250,000 next year. This is not only technology that goes into the room, there are necessary room improvements, it is a fairly large project that we thing shouldn’t be put off any longer and this is a safety factor for us in the Town. I talked earlier about the sewer extension. This is being funded by sewer fees, so again, it will not go into the general tax increase. For those who do face sewer fees, they will feel this. The Town Clerk vault expansions is a very large project. We are budgeting it over three
years. Frankly, this is something that is mandated by the State. They come out and inspect our facilities for record retention. They mandate that we keep certain records on site. We have looked at alternatives to send them to a certain off site storage facilities, that is not allowed. We have looked at microfiche, which would take a lot less room that is not allowed in some cases, it is in some cases. So with all that, we need to expand the facility. It’s not just the wall, it is the surrounding room and work that needs to happen there. So, the total of the top five projects in the capital budget, we are requesting $1.7 million. This shows our existing and projected debt. Let me make some clarifying statement on this. One that shows all debt. If you look at the bottom left hand corner of the slide, it shows all of the projects that we currently have discussed. It does not mean that we, as a
community, have voted. The ones that we have agreed to and therefore incurred the debt, which is shown here on the chart, is the high school renovations, that Town hall renovations, which are nearly complete, and the MH Rhodes that we acquired several years ago. Those three projects are already obligations of the Town based upon referendum. We have need for it and we have the building committee looking at study for the library renovations and expansion. Our fire department has repeatedly requested that we look at the fire station expansion and a training facility on the west side of Town. That is where the Town is grown most in the past few years. And we are looking at that as a potential addition in the future. And finally, some renovations and additional playing fields down at Fisher Meadows, because of the increased population, those fields are full. And some point in the future, we anticipate having to add to the capability down there. Not buying more land, but making
current land on playing fields, we are allowed to, under our regulations. All this shows our total debt line. I should say that we are anticipating, given our current knowledge of these projects, that we cap out in 2011 and in 2012 and hopefully that will start a downward trend in our debt. We have tried to, wherever possible, keep our employment population fairly flat. This year, he actually anticipate going down by three. From 112 to 109. This is due to retirements. You will see this going down. Over the last 18 years, as shown here, we have only gone up by 8 full time employees while the Town population has gone up by roughly 26%. Unlike the school system that has a much greater one for one impact with Town population growth. We do feel some throughout the Town, whether it’s on the Police side or the Public Works side. As I mentioned earlier, we have got some more roads that need to plowing and attended to. All that drives our need for personnel as well. We are
fortunate this year, we reconfigured some of our employment and believe that we can decrease our employment count from 112 to 109 full time and keep our part time flat at 128. Our general wage increase for both bargain and non-bargain and there are some differences. We have non-bargaining units, whether it’s police or public works, and there are a couple of other smaller ones as well, but in general, about 3.2% of an increase. What we are really going to feel in the budget though is a 1.94% increase and that is dues, as a I said earlier of a reconfiguration of our employees and three employees retiring. We are fortunate that we live in a very safe Town in two ways. We are protected by volunteer fire department who does exemplary work for us. If you have had the opportunity to participate any of their events, hopefully not a fire in your home, I don’t mean that, whether it be a picnic, carnival or their annual banquet I would highly
recommend that you do that. Just to see the types of things that they undertake. It is a very complex business. It is not just going out and putting water on a fire. It is responding such tragic accidents as those that have occurred on Route 44 at the base of the mountain. It is responding to chemical issues that we have and other such things. It takes a lot of training. They give countless hours and I have volunteered for this Town for almost 20 years. As I have said, I have never put my life on the line, but these folks to it on a regular basis. We are bless because they are a volunteer group. I dare not thing what it would cost to have the same type of service provided by a full time paid group and I think that our services are as good if not better than anyone else. Likewise, we are protected by an outstanding police department. I am delighted to see that our police calls have actually gone down by 1% over
the past year. I believe we live in a very safe Town as reflected in our property values and reflected in many things here in Town. But as I said earlier, we need to continue to support both of these functions, fire and police. There are training needs, mandated needs that we must meeting and this does draw in some budget increases for us. But if we don’t take care of this, frankly we can incur some types of things we don’t want to incur. Higher crime potentially, or potentially having to get into a situation where we don’t have a volunteer fire department. As I started out a few minutes ago, and I hope it was just a few minutes, the Town is requesting a 4.9% increase in its budget. Roughly half of that comes from utility costs, gasoline and diesel fuel, that type of thing. The other half is scattered into a variety of programs. We actually are not putting any new programs on line this year, although there are
additional costs of running throughout. The sewers, again, are being funded through sewer fees. Debt service, this is based upon referendums that we all voted in. I hope all of you voted in. And so, therefore, we have contractual obligations to meet this. Finally, the capital improvement projects that are noted here. These are, many times, the easiest ones to cut. But, really, do they go away? And when they come back, most times, they cost us a lot more because of the increase cost of labor, rather than now. So, overall, $7.7% increase, what we are requesting there. We see little increase this year in our net grand list. It is going off of 1.5% if we did nothing, if we did not raise taxes. This would generate an additional $870,000 in tax revenues. But, we feel that we need to do things beyond that, both here in our Council budget, as well as the Board of Ed budget and I would really recommend that you
support this budget as we go forth. We are also blessed in this town, that we have a very disciplined and conscience taxpayer, because we collect 99% of our taxes. So thank you for that and I ask that you continue with that. No matter what happens. And I thank you very much for your time and I will turn it over to Tom Harrison.
Chairman Harrison Presents Board of Finance Overview
Chairman Harrison: Thank you John. Again, an excellent presentation as you do every year. Before we get to the Board of Finance slides, I would like to add to something John said. He recognized a tremendous contribution made to our Town by Phil Schenck and I fully share and agree with that. But we don’t want to forget that we have in Avon two outstanding administrators, although on the school side, Dick Kisiel has not been here as long as Phil, he certainly prepares readily with Phil in terms of his dedication, his skills. And I would like to call for a round of applause for Dick Kisiel. Dick, I think you and I share the two worst jobs in Town because we never get anything right, at least in the eye of some people. At this point, we will have a couple
of slides on the financial aspect of all of the budgets. I don’t think we have a combined slide anywhere, but the total budget presentation of five general categories of schools, the Town operating debt service, capital improvement and sewers, collectively, they have totaled about $72 million. About $1.7 million of that is sewers, which is paid by separate fees. So what we are really talking about, in terms of what most directly effects everybody is about $70.5 million increased spending requests will be funded largely through the property tax and we will give you a break down on that. So, for purposes of what the Board of Finance does, we don’t get into or address the sewers because they are separately funded, although we do look at the other four categories. And the purposes of this meeting and the meetings that will follow, we are looking at a budget increase request of about %70.5 million, which, if there go through unchanged and
if they were then approved, it would require an increase in the mill rate. That means a tax increase of 8.02%. So that is really the numbers that most of you are really focusing on tonight. Now, having said that, let’s begin our slides. There are those people in Town who, in good faith and quite sincerely, are requesting spending increases to provide for increase services in the Town. We have heard tonight and have seen by your applause, I think people in general are quite satisfied with the level services and their quality. There are requests that are pending for increase services, which require increased spending. So, that’s the little character on the left. The character on the right is the person who has to cut the checks to pay for those increased services. That is always the battle that we are confronting is how do we come up with a balance between legitimate requests for services and spending and equally
legitimate requests for some sort of control on the tax increase to pay for those services. So, that is what we will wrestle with over the next couple of days. John mentioned it, this is really a significant factor in how much we are going to have to pay in taxes. If you notice the trend, the grand list has been declining steadily for the last four years. And as John said, this year, the list is only about $870,000 in so called new money. That’s largely a function of the fact that we don’t have a lot more buildable land in Avon, so that we are not going to get it to grow. In the past, when we had a pretty high grand list growths, 3-4%, the additional revenue that that produced made it a lot easier for us to pay for those increased services because we started the budget season with a big bump up in revenue through the grand list growth. But we don’t have that anymore and I don’t see it going back to the way it was up
until a couple of years ago. I think that most of you are aware that this summer and fall, we are going to be going to go through the required five year revaluation of all of the properties. By the way, there will be a couple meetings in sometime in May, I don’t have the dates, but it will be on the website, for the Assessor, Harry DerAsadourian and the contractor who will be doing the field work, will be available to describe what they do, what they look at, what they don’t look at, what you can do to find out what’s going on. I think there has been some concern in the past that people really weren’t involved or aware of the process. We are going to try and address that. So keep an eye on the Town website and it will probably be in the newspapers. There will be a meeting toward the end of May at which all of that will be explained. At this point, nobody knows, realistically how the grand list is going to change by
the revaluation. I know we talked about a potential tax increase, I don’t think too many of us have experienced this year, at least, an 8% growth in the value of our homes. So whether revaluation is completed late this fall, I don’t know if it is going to show an increase or a decrease. Anyway, that is going on and a year from now, we will be talking about whatever impact they may have. This shows you and I think this is important, of the money we raise in property taxes, where does it come from? You can see the biggest chunk, 76% of the money our property taxes raise comes from the residential properties. The individual homes, condos, that kind of thing. We get a small percent from commercial, industrial, 11%. We don’t really have a lot of industrial or commercial room in Avon. We have some on Route 44. We have a couple of office parks, Avon Park North and South. But we don’t have a lot of
available room for too much more additional industrial or commercial properties, so that 11% proportion that comes from the stores that you see, is not likely to grow by very much. 7% comes from the property tax we pay on motor vehicles and smaller amount from personal property, that’s furniture, fixtures, equipment on businesses. John mentioned, and I think we have the slide down the road here, about our tax collection rate, which is quite high, extraordinarily high, 99.9%. There are a couple of cracks starting to appear. Just over the last month or two, those of you who know our tax collector, Kay Roth, are aware of what a tiger she is. It is very difficult to escape her grasp, but Kay is reporting that over the last month or two, there has just been a little bit of a blip, small yet, in this category. The personal property of furniture, fixtures and equipment, a couple of the smaller businesses in Town are not making those tax payments. They are experiencing cash flow and
other kinds of problems. It is not a deluge yet, it’s not serious, but it is a signal that the economic troubles that we are reading about are here in Avon. Hopefully, we can keep them under control, but they are there and you have to be aware of it. So, it might have a small impact on our tax collection rate, but it’s out there. This one shows you our tax collection rates and you can see that we have done very very well. John eluded to the debt service and we have a couple to slides about this. You can see, in our debt service, which in the proposed budget, will be under $5.5 million. 91% of that is school related. Primarily, you can see that it is a huge chunk of money and it is all money we have approved, willingly, we have all supported it, but it is a big chunk of our debt collection. And the $5.5 million, rough number for this year, separate from any new bonding that we may take on, the library, possibly, but
those were already been approved at past referendum, that number will go up by about another $400,000 over the next 2 fiscal years. That is just built in. It was all disclosed when we did the presentations for the most recent parking on the high school and on the building renovations at Town hall. We are not done yet. That number will go up by another $400,000. And it’s money we have to pay, obviously, but it’s money that’s not being spent on future salaries or repaving roads. It’s money that we got, Kay authorized it, but it’s also not available for our operating expenses, so you have to keep that in mind. Now, this shows where we get our revenues by sources. The bulk of our revenues that we use that we are talking about, 86.6% comes from the property tax. We are fairly high on that because we don’t have a big investment in commercial. Other Towns, Farmington gets a bigger chunk and
other kinds of things, but we get 86% of the Town revenue that we are talking about tonight for increasing services comes from the property tax. We get about 8% from other sources and that covers a multitude of things, fees, building permit fees, pool pass fees, landfill fees that John talked about that will be going up by $100,000 total next year, grants that we get back from the State on various things, education cost sharing. 8% comes from, so called, other sources and not only is the grand list declining, but also the other revenues that are not really increasing either. We are not getting a lot back from the State. We get a little bit more than we have in the past, but it’s not matching the request for additional spending. And the other 55 or so is from other kinds of grants that we get. So you can see, we really are very heavily dependent on the property tax. 86 cents of every dollar of revenue that we want to talk about for
services comes from the property tax. This shows now where the expenditures go. I talked about roughly $70 million excluding the sewers. You can see that 61% of that would go to the Board of Education if there operating budget is approved. 25% is the Town’s operating portion, 7 ½ % is debt service and the other 3% are for capital projects that John talked about. So, you can see where the money is going and see the trend because of the growth and enrollment, the school portion, the operating budget is going up a little bit each year. The Town’s percentage has been declining slightly each year because of the need to shift some money into the schools. That is where it’s going by those categories that I mentioned. Now, this is looking at the expenditures a little bit differently. This talks about the sources as you can see. The school operating budget has been increasing fairly steadily over the last
several years. The Town operating budget on the lower lever there. Debt service edging up slightly over a little over 5% now. That will give you some idea of the trend. It began because of the enrollment growth, the school’s portion of the operating budget has been increasing steadily. Now, this shows it by the kinds of things our expenditures go on. When you combine the operating budget of the Board of Education plus the Board’s portion of debt service for school construction plus the school’s portion of the capital improvements such as the boiler at Roaring Brook, you can see that combined, 70% of all of our expenditures are school related one way or the other. Operating debt service, so forth. And almost 30% go to the other categories, Town and that sort of thing. The Town’s portion of the debt service. So, you can see, you have all been extremely generous over the years in what you have been
willing to approve for school spending and that is a collective decision that we, the Town made. But, be aware of that we get into the inevitable discussion about are we spending enough on schools and that’s a topic we certainly can discuss, but we are already spending approximately 70% of the Town’s revenue of school related functions. This is just a breakdown of our capital projects. Okay. This is one that a lot of your are probably interested in. I think you have it in the handout. Let me just explain some of this. This column over here, when we do bonding, the Board of Finance, as most of you know, puts together a tax impact statement. And we base it on three different levels within the assessed value. You pay your property tax on your assessed value, not on the market value. The assessed value is 70% of the market value. We always use three different levels of assessed value. This one here, that’s what I call the magical, mythical house. That is dead smack in the
middle of all of the assessed values in Avon. This means that there are as many assessed values above that $202,000 as there are below it. This figure on the top there, the 75th percentile, that means 75% of the assessed values are below that $288,000 and 25% are above it. And this one is just the opposite. The $146,000 means that there are 25% with assessed values below that and 75% above it. But if we just focus for purpose of this on the one in the magical mystical middle there, you will see that the current property tax is $5,173. If the 8.02% increase is submitted and approved, that house will pay instead of $5,173, $5,588, which is $400 more. Then we have to add in the car taxes and the Assessor actually has a standard value based on statistical analysis that there are 2 vehicles roughly for every assessed, so that will add another $592, so before you get to sewers, that would go up to $6,100. If you on sewers, and
about 60% of the community is, that fee is going up next year, $300, so you would be paying $5,173 base and going up to $6,480. So that will give you some idea of the impact if we go with the, to approve the 8.02% tax increase. But, there is a lot going to go through what is a chart that shows you various options. We doubt that anyone is going to complain that the 8.02% is low, so we put that as that highest amount. But we have also shown what the tax increase for each of those percentile homes would be at a lower percentage, 7 ½, 7, 6 ½, 6 etc. It goes down in half percent intervals. So you can compare what you would pay, and this is just on the house. This doesn’t include cars or sewers, you have to add that too. But you can see a range for that house in the middle and the top end is $5,588 would be that portion of the tax. If we do it at the bottom, we asked Phil to check 3%, it would be $5,173. So there
is roughly a $400 spread for various levels of tax increases from the 8.02% that is proposed down to the 3% that we have done in the last couple of years. So that will give you something. This slide shows how the mill rate requested this year compares with what we have been doing in the past. This one is one of the highest, but it is a little bit misleading because it came after a revaluation year. That year, the grand list actually went down, so although it’s about 9 point something percent, just a little over half of that was what we needed just to stay even. We had to get a 5% tax increase to stay even with what the higher grand list produced the year before. So that distorts it. The first year, we had budgets defeated, you can see, they lead to a downward trend. The last four years, it’s been a tad under 3%. The request this year goes up to 8.02%, so it’s a significant change from what we had been paying
over the last years, and it doesn’t really match the one 9% one because that was the impact of the reval. year. So, it was a significant bump up in taxes. This chart compares the 8.02% to some other statistics. Cost of living on social security went up 2.3%. Now, this one shows the equalized mill rate. This is an attempt that the State has statistics to put this together where it tries to build up some way to get a direct apples to apples comparison on mill rates. What this would reflect, would be if you took a piece of property, for example, that had the same price, it may be different size, but a $250,000 piece of property in any of these Towns, this would be an equalized mill rate. As you can see, we are probably about the second lowest of any of the Towns. Farmington beats us slightly because they have Westfarms Mall and those office complexes along Interstate 84. So, with the outstanding that the Town and the
school do to provide services, they are doing that at a lower equalized tax rate than other Town, which I attribute to the skill and dedication of the Town and school employees and administrators and staffs, but that will give you some idea of where we compare to other Town’s on an apples to apples basis. This divides population. If you took what our tax raises by population here per capita figure, you can see where the highest per capita tax burden, even though it’s less because there are population difference. They are a little bit higher. We are 20th in the State in that per capita tax burden. So, to summarize it briefly, the spending increases for everything are there. The grand list increase, the mill rate, and so forth. We have to go up to 27.6 mill rate from 25.55. The next steps in the process, as Dwight Johnson explained, the Charter assigns to our Board, the role of looking at the proposed budget
requests, listening to what the voters tell us and what we are hearing tonight, e-mails, letters, comments, whatever. We then determine if we have to make any adjustments to the budget requests. And then whatever we do there, we recommend it to the Town at referendum. We have a workshop scheduled for Wednesday, April 9th at the library and is open to the public. There will be limited opportunity for public comment, but not comparable to what we have tonight. If necessary, we will do one the next night, but for the last four or five years, we have been able to complete it on one night and that’s our hope this year. The Town meeting will be May 5th and at that meeting, we will present whatever the budget is that we recommended. If it is identical with what is being discussed tonight, or if it’s been adjusted, then that will be decided at the referendum on May 14th. Blythe, is there anything
else? Is that it? So, that is the financial picture of what we have to deal with. Defining revenue, increase requests for spending, a shaky economy, some of that sign showing up in Avon with a slight bump in tax payments. At this point, we will begin the public comment. Would you please put the lights on? Thank you. And again, the ground rules we have two microphones. We have one in the front and one near the back. Raise your hand and I will jump around the room , front to back and so forth. Whichever microphone you use, please state your name and your address. This is being recorded and we ask that the first round, at least, that it be 3 minutes roughly and we will give you a second chance if necessary. Again, everyone can feel free to speak, but if it gets repetitive, it will be shortened a little bit. Now, I see that someone has already anticipated that they will have the benefit of having raised her
hand and been recognized and go and if you would be kind enough to tell us who you are and where you are from.
Chairman Harrison Calls Upon the Audience For Questions and Comments on the Town Council, Board of Finance and Board of Education Budgets
Sonja Larkin-Thorne, 5 Avondale Drive: I am a 17 plus year resident of the Town. I am going to be more than three minutes because listening to this presentation, and they did an extraordinary job, I have to say ouch. Because it appears from my own calculator in my mind, without a calculator today, that my property taxes will approach $10,000 next year. And that’s a little scary. I’m retired. I thought I would retire early and enjoy traveling and doing things after 30 hard years in the insurance industry and educating my son. What my comments today are directed on just to the Board of Finance and the Board of Education and the Town Council, but to all of the residents of Avon because I think we all have to stop and take a long hard look at what we are
faced with in this Town. When I was transferred here from California, I worked for the Legislature and I saw the impact of residents being taxed out of their homes, especially senior citizens, and they revolted and they revolted in a way that has basically ruined the school system and the State and it’s called Prop 13, where residents went in an voted down the ability to raise property taxes on an annually basis and put senior citizens and others out of their homes. Now, we don’t have an initiative process in Connecticut like they do in California, but people are going to begin to revolt because the weight is becoming to …..and when I look at our Town and 86 cents of every dollar coming from property taxes, we have to step back and take a look at how we are doing this because we have to look at the future. And the future is will our children be able to come back and live in this Town after they have received an extraordinary education and the way
we are going now, no they will not. They will not be able to afford to live in the homes that they grew up in. You know, I read with great deal of interest, an article in the Avon Post on April 4th, and the article stated that schools need the community’s help. They stated in the article defining what it means to be a community. A unified body of individuals. And then the article went on to talk about the animosity that exists between individuals and groups within the Town. It stated that maybe it’s time to begin to listen to each other and work together. And I whole heartedly endorse that. But, all of the comments in that article after that focused on one subject, and that was the schools. It didn’t focus or talk about the critical financial and infrastructure issues that this Town is facing. Our beloved Avon needs to take a step back and take a look. I totally agree that our schools are
extraordinary, but one part that we have to recognize is that we are a community as a whole. It’s not just the schools. It’s the community in its entirety. I am here this evening because I am concerned. I am concerned that, as the article states, that a unified community is a thriving and successful community. Well the whole community needs to be unified and successful. We need to maintain this community so that all residents are valued regardless of their age, regardless of whether or not they have a child in school. A real community is one that strives to ensure that it’s entire community is served. And that means that we all, as a unity community, have to have the courage to step back and make sure we are providing equal services to all of our residents. We all know and we appreciate the fact that our educational system is number one. But, that education system is based really on the teachers in the
classroom who are doing the job of educating our students. And you all do an exceptional job. They are the ones that are producing the best educated students in the State. Avon teachers are also some of the best educated teachers in the State. They have an average of 15.1 years as educators. 93.3% of the have Master’s degrees. That shows, that I as a resident have no problem with the salaries our teacher make and I am not here to talk about that today. They earn every dollar of what we pay them and my hat goes off to them. So in reality, when we look at our schools and we look at what our challenges are, we don’t need that many salad bars in the cafeteria folks. We don’t need to look at how many sports we offer. It’s all about the classroom teacher and the extraordinary job that the classroom does for us all.
Chairman Harrison: Please start to wind it up in another minute or so please.
Sonja Larkin-Thorne: So, my recommendation to you, that in order to maintain an economically diverse community, for our long term residents, our senior citizens on fixed salaries, our Town employees and police officers can afford to live here, we are going to have to have some shared sacrifices. We have got to pay attention to the maintenance on our streets. The corner house that I live in has had a curb that’s been knocked out since 1993. I pay my taxes every year, but I can’t get anybody out there to fix my curb. Our Senior Center is only operating 30 hours a week. It can’t apply for State and Federal grants because they are not operating enough hours. So they can’t really serve all of our seniors. What I would suggest, it
that you all step back. We have all applauded Phil today. I have heard from all of my friends at Metro Hartford Alliance, he is the best there is in the State for what he does. We are faced with the facts that we have the bonding for the library and all of these expenses are going to hit us next year and nobody is really wanting to put down on paper and talk about Tom did a great job in putting it all together. Those are all going to impact us next year. So my big suggestion is that we say to Phil and we let him lead the taskforce and he looks at the duplication of services that exist between our schools and our Town. We let him consolidate some of these services, but why do we need snow plows at the school, why do we need plows at the Town. Why do we need purchasing agents at the school and why do we need purchasing agents at the Town. So what I am saying is, we really need to step back and take a hard look at how we are doing things
and consolidate and cut expenses and leave Avon as livable for all of our residents as we can.
Jay Spivak, 125 Northgate: I wrote this speech because I want to limit it to 3 minutes to keep it fair to everybody else here. I support the proposed budget. I commend the Board of Education for requesting the given proposal. For several years, Avon schools have had to cut program after program because of the lack of funding. The numbers show that we have not kept up with the education inflation as represented by our neighboring Towns or the nation as a whole. This year, we have to play catch up and increase the educational spending to make up for all of the recent years of minimum increases. Although our teachers are great and our student’s test scores remain high, our schools are being cut to minimum requirements. In a world where we know our kids
need to be well rounded to be successful, our enrichment and extracurricular programs are being eliminated. The budget proposal is aiming to keep the status quo. Today’s Avon kids deserve the same excellent dedication that was provided to the Avon student’s before them. If anyone has been there this year, you also know my extreme concern about the overcrowding of Roaring Brook School. Class sizes recently have grown from 19 to 24 students per class. The last time the enrollment was this high at Roaring Brook, we had another school, Thompson Brook built, to alleviate the growth. I have been assured by the Board of Ed and the Superintendent that this issue will be resolved before next year. I know that the budget proposal will make this task possible. I understand the grand list is not significantly increasing and we face larger utility costs. I don’t want to pay any more taxes, but I know that when my property taxes
are paid, I see a direct benefit to my Town. To the seniors in our Town, limited resources, limited incomes. I would support tax incentives to help them stay in Avon. Unlike Federal or State taxes, we can all see where our money is being spent and how it benefits us. This year, I believe that Avon is prepared to pass a budget that allows the Town to keep the existing services in place. Thank you.
Claire Henderson, One Keystone Circle: Thank you Tom and thank you for allowing me to speak. I have lived here almost 30 years. I am not immune to what I heard tonight, but ladies and gentlemen, members of the Board, this is not the time. This is not the time for Avon to lead the Town’s in the Farmington Valley in spending. This is not the time for Avon to propose a budget that more than triples the national cost of living percentage. This is not the time for Avon to abandon its recent fiscal constraints. This is not the time for Avon to ignore the realities of the housing market and the increase foreclosures in Town. This is not the time for Avon to ignore the economic downturn in this State and country and as we just heard, in this Town. Do you
know what I want? I want Avon to control spending just like I do in my home. I want Avon to be without things they want and some things they need just like I do. I want Avon to live within their means just like I do. I want Avon to live on a 2.3% increase just like I receive from Social Security. This is not the time for an 8.02% increase. Ladies and Gentlemen, this is just not the time. Thank you.
limited incomes. I would support tax incentives to help them stay in Avon. Unlike Federal or State taxes, we can all see where our money is being spent and how it benefits us. This year, I believe that Avon is prepared to pass a budget that allows the Town to keep the existing services in place. Thank you.
Claire Henderson, One Keystone Circle: Thank you Tom and thank you for allowing me to speak. I have lived here almost 30 years. I am not immune to what I heard tonight, but ladies and gentlemen, members of the Board, this is not the time. This is not the time for Avon to lead the Town’s in the Farmington Valley in spending. This is not the time for Avon to propose a budget that more than triples the national cost of living percentage. This is not the time for Avon to abandon its recent fiscal constraints. This is not the time for Avon to ignore the realities of the housing market and the increase foreclosures in Town. This is not the time for Avon to ignore the economic downturn in this State and country and as we just heard, in this Town. Do you
know what I want? I want Avon to control spending just like I do in my home. I want Avon to be without things they want and some things they need just like I do. I want Avon to live within their means just like I do. I want Avon to live on a 2.3% increase just like I receive from Social Security. This is not the time for an 8.02% increase. Ladies and Gentlemen, this is just not the time. Thank you.
Nancy Kostal, 31 Rosewood Road: Thank you. Over the past several years, the Board of Education and residents of Avon have approved relatively modest increase for the Town budgets. We have felt effects of this fiscal conservatism through program and staffing reductions and spending freezes. No one wants to pay higher taxes, least of all me. But it is imperative that we fully fund the opening of the high school addition, meet our contractual obligations, and provide the types of educational experiences for our children that will ultimately benefit the community as a whole. I urge the Board of Finance to permit the proposed budgets to proceed to referendum as they have been presented. Please give the voters of Avon the opportunity to express their voices, to tighten
their belts and adopt the budget as presented. Thank you.
Flo Stahl, 2 Sunset Trail: Thank you Tom and good evening everybody. First of all, I would like to thank Bill Vernile, Human Resources Manager for the Town of Avon and Gary Franzi, Director of Finance for the Avon public school system for his assistance in compiling this compensation report. Thanks also to Peggy Roell and to Dr. Kisiel for providing additional data. We truly appreciate your help. Thank you all. No one believes we will have an 8.02% increase in property taxes. It will be a lesser amount, which will or will not be approved by the voters on May 14th. So I am going to address other aspects of the budget. Myths that surround this process every year. Myth number one is that more and more money for public education means
smarter and happier kids. Myth number two is that the reaction of the budget divides the young and the rich from the old and the poor. Now, there is no point arguing myth number one, no matter how many facts are presented. We are not discussing the severe lack of money for public education in Avon. We are discussing the culture. In the UK, Germany, France, Scandinavia to name a few, the conversation is not about class size or how the new building should be. The conversations and resources are about laboratory equipment, computers, supplies, text books and special needs situations. These students excel in every category worldwide. As for myth number two, the division of classes, you know that is untrue. In good times and in bad, people of all ages and incomes have supported Avon’s growing needs and will continue to do so. But when spending double in less than ten years, beyond an equivalent increase in population in
school age children, it alarms tax payers across the spectrum. Willingness to pay more and more of one’s available income in property taxes is not necessarily tied to age or financial status. In the past, these big spending increases were masked by a dynamic grand list. But now that the grand list is slowing, we will literally feel the pain of the consequences. Here in Avon, what’s driving most of the spending is this. It is the 800 pound gorilla that nobody wants to talk about. Hyper-inflated salaries and benefits for some select employees. Do we recognize that we have built an outstanding school system that attracts families from within and outside the State? We definitely acknowledge that. Do we know that some Avon residents are unconcerned about large property tax and spending increase and will pay anything? Yes, we know that too. Do we appreciate and respect our employees? Of course we do.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is not personal. It is a hard concept that it not personal, it is fiscal and it’s unsustainable. We are already caught in the cycle of spending, taxing and monitoring with more talk about borrowing for capital projects that used to be phased in our cash basis. Do we understand that we must support our infrastructure and services? Yes, of course we do. But as a Hartford Courant columnist recently stated for now on, relief must come not from new money, but from new rules. We need real incentives. Incentives for department heads that stimulate innovated ways to do more with less. We need to consolidate positions between the Town of Avon and the Board of Education that duplicate each other. We need to stop alarming parents with lists like this of potential cuts. Unless and until we are willing to take a serious look at our own operations and self-serving policies. The problem is not
more revenue, it’s less spending. Thank you very much.
Sarah Nathan, 92 Avonridge: Hi everyone. First I want to thank all of our Town Boards for their efforts and hard work. I want to speak a little to the Board of Ed budget. And it’s more than mere numbers. It is a statement of philosophy. A statement of what we do, how we do it and why we do it. It is a statement of what we need to do to make our children our future. Education is a business where we do not start with uniformed raw materials and produce uniformed products. It is the Board of Ed’s job to educate 3,613 students. Each with their unique needs and talents. We need to educate our students in a way that reasonable meets each of their needs and prepares them to be a productive and competitive member of society. Year after
year, the Board of Ed works very hard to present our fiscally responsible budget and year after year, they are asked to reduce it, to cut reasonable and necessary needs. These budget cuts chip away, year after year at the foundation of all of our schools. These budget cuts are at the expense of our children’s education. Our district is lacking in technology depriving our students of the knowledge and experience they need to compete in today’s marketplace. I am not talking about anything fancy. LCD projectors and computers. Several years ago, Avon High School offered German, French, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, Latin and Russian. Today, we offer French, Spanish and Latin, and next year, Greek. Technology costs money and it’s one of the first to go when items are asked to reduce the already bare bones budget. Public education is a business where we cannot spin off or close down our most expensive cost centers. Education is a business, where the investment is in the student,
the investment is in the future of Avon. Theirs and ours. It is a business where it may take years to see the investment pay off, but when it does, it’s priceless. The budget that the Board of Ed presented is an educationally sound budget and one that has already given way to many cuts to get to the point where it’s at tonight. It represents an investment that this community will support, and I hope that by this wonderful turnout tonight, that it will be replicated when we all go out to vote yes to support this current and proposed budget. Please do not cut our budget any further. Thank you.
Martin Kaplan, 22 Cottonwood Drive: I have been here for 30 years. I applaud the various Boards for the presentation, although I don’t have remarks, but I do have some rhetorical questions. As you can see, I come from the elderly population.
Chairman Harrison: Smile when you say that.
Martin Kaplan: It is hard to smile when you get to be my age. But, at this point in time, with the situation being what it is, we have reduced income with the higher expense. Medical expenses are drawing us in a higher proportion than the various facilities of the Town of Avon are going up. I have three rhetorical questions with regard to the budget. Of course, I think the budget is too high and somebody needs to do something about that. But, the question I have is when the school addition, the high school addition was proposed, I understand the proposal number, $31 or $32 million, I think we came in under budget and I think that should be applauded. I thought it should be way under budget. The question is that $1 or $2 million dollars or whatever it is of
enhanced income that the Town has, is that going back to the taxpayer. The second rhetorical question, the Board of Education and Administration is asking for 3.2% increase for the year, 2.2%, which is a reasonable increase in these economical times. The third rhetorical question is, I don’t quite understand how you have an increase in student population for this coming fiscal year what has been reflected over the last year or two. Thank you.
Chairman Harrison: Thank you. To those questions, does anybody, Board of Ed or the Town side want to respond. Perhaps, Phil, could you or John, discuss what happens if there is excess at the end of the construction project and where that goes.
John Carlson: First, we have not decided on the final numbers; they are still going through the construction project, but you are right, sir, we do anticipate a savings over what was anticipated we spent. When we are doing a major construction project such as the one at the high school, we use bond anticipation notes to pay for the project during the construction process. Once they are done and we have a total number and final number, at that point we go out to bond for the final number. That is what we bond. So, there is not really an excess amount of money. We have authorization to go out and get more money, that is what we voted on at referendum, but we don’t have excess money that comes back to the Town coffers.
Chairman Harrison: Can you answer the other two questions, Peggy?
Peggy Roell: The 3.2% the administrators, as I mentioned, as the third year of our contract, it was negotiated for three years, those are contractual obligations we made at that time and we need to follow through on it for this year. The student enrollment, the actual numbers for the last few years have been going up. Unlike a business where you can control how much inventory you are making, our students, we have no control over who is moving into Town. Will the number be less because there are less home sales? Maybe, but who knows what is going to happen between now and September with home sales. My husband hopes I can sell some houses. I has been about 100 students a year for the last three or four years. It’s 515 students over five years.
Chairman Harrison: Some of the numbers in the chart for different categories was projected this time last year and what actually showed up on the enrollment, most recent January reflections, so they are not necessarily one year to one year, there are intermediate numbers that they have.
Peggy Roell: I will be happy to talk to you about it later on.
Chairman Harrison: Thank you, Peggy.
Kimberly Holmes, 61 Parkview Drive: I moved here when my son was six months old. He is six years old now, and as a disciplined taxpayer, I pay my property taxes here for five years before my son has been able to enjoy an education here in Avon. But the reason I moved here is because I wanted him to be in kindergarten, first grade, second grade, third grade, etc. and since he has been in first grade at Roaring Brook School, I have to say, daily I’m floored by the content, quality and the depth of what he is learning. So much so that I can’t believe I’m getting, for what I’m paying, this education for my child. Now, I paid property taxes for five years before I took advantage of this system in anticipation having it for my child’s education. And I anticipate that I am going to live long after he graduates. I love this community and I realize at that point in time, like many of the seniors here who have raised their children in Avon schools, that I will not longer be personally
benefiting with a child in the system, but I will have benefited and I will continue to contribute to a community that raised the level of my child’s education to what it was. One thing that jumped off the page at me, literally, in the Board of Education’s presentation, I think reasonable assessment, in terms of what it means for addressing real issues in terms of needs, is the number of student increased enrollment and more importantly, the percentage of student increased enrollment. Which, I don’t know about the rest of you, but whatever your constituency or whatever your particular values are, that is why you see more than double the percent of any other Town in terms of student increase. It is quite alarming. And, that’s just the facts. That’s the numbers. The students are here, and someone spoke earlier about the time is not know, well I would respectfully disagree. The time is now, when 17.2 %, the next
closest is 9%. With that increase in students, I have seen my child’s class go from 22 to 25 students this year in first grade at Roaring Brook. And if not for his phenomenal teacher, I really think he would have suffered in terms of what he brings home on a daily basis in terms of marveling. Now, I realize that, obviously, my vantage point is skewed because I have a first grader. But, as I said, I was here for five year before I took advantage of the school system. And I was here, not because of the landfill, which is a fabulous facility, but people don’t move to Avon for the Landfill. They move here for the schools and they stay in this Town because they love the community. We can all disagree about that, but people say, many people send their kids to private schools, and there are many around this area to send kids to, I wouldn’t be doing that, because its Avon or Simsbury. And Simsbury had a decrease in student
population. I say, why can’t we have a decrease. Why do we have a 17% increase when Simsbury has a .05% decrease. Well, it is what it is. And to the extent it is what it is, we need to respond now and we need to address that. I would like to say one final thing. Computers, books, equipment are very important, but nothing replaces a teacher. Nothing replaces when I see when my child come home and just says that I absolutely just love my teacher. That is the foundation of all the students benefit from, not just those kids in first grade. And I respectively ask the Board, keep the Board of Education’s proposed budget.
Dottie Magda, 12 Crestwood Drive: I am one of the ones who graduated Avon High School 45 years ago. I have been here and have fought to stay in this Town. Unfortunately, I was not able to put anyone into the school system here in Avon. My two children were raised in other areas of the country. My taxes and my parent’s taxes have provided education for 45 years for other people. The thing that I have found that is very disturbing is, at the Town Meeting, it was often said by some of the past through people that live here for 3-5 years and use the schools that maybe the older people should just move out if we can’t afford it. Well, folks, I have tried to move out. I put my house on the market at the end of 2006 into 2007 and within 6 months,
I saw the value of my house drop by over $70,000. I can’t afford to move out and leave what I’ve built here for the last 50 years and go somewhere else to stay ahead. It is a quandary that a lot of us are facing. One of the things that a lot of people have not mentioned, I’m also on the Chamber of Commerce. I run a small business. We don’t have anything in the grand list that we are looking at, fighting for to build in a way of bring in business. Small business, large business, something to relieve the basis that we have that is falling on the shoulders of those of us who live in the homes. We have got businesses that are going out because they can’t get the kind of people they need to work here because there isn’t a way for them to live here to work here. I would suggest in looking at this budget and what we are thinking about and what we are bringing in, is how do we develop a base in this
Town so that it’s not just the homeowners who are trying the educate the elderly that are trying to stay, but also the businesses that can increase our grand list, our quality of life, and keep what we have fought so hard for over these years. Thank you.
Raymond Dicamillo, 67 Talcott Notch Road: I would like to focus in on two things. One of the things that I would like to focus on is on Page 5 of the Board of Education. We have a pie chart and it shows instructional materials and other that comes to about $5 million. I would like to get a breakdown of that to see how the particular school gets $1,300 worth of materials. So if you could give that to me. The next thing I would like to focus on is how about a little creativity in rewarding the teacher for doing a good job. One way to do that is to say, at Christmas time or at the end of the year, all of the parents of the students get together and give the teachers a good gift. That way the teacher gets something, doesn’t have to pay taxes on it, and the
teacher benefits.
Chairman Harrison: Does anyone want to respond? Do you want to get some information and get back to the speaker? Sir, on your question about the supplies, Peggy Roell or Dr. Kisiel will get back to you. If we could have an e-mail or something, if you give them a way to reach you, they will give you an answer to that. Thank you.
Sue Henneberry, 488 Huckleberry Hill Road: I brought a visual and there are some handouts that go along with it. Extraordinary things happen each day in our schools. Avon teachers are some of the best in the State. Our schools have been recognized as being the best in Connecticut based on standardized testing, our advanced placement courses. The success story will not be able to continue without the proper resources. Avon is falling behind when it comes to school funding. In recent years, Avon has added more students with fewer resources than surrounding Towns. We are experiencing what I call a funding gap. It is our collective responsibility to fund public schools to prepare our children for the future. The future will surely require its
citizens to be able to use advance technology and communicating in multiple languages. Particularly, if we complete with those European kids. Based upon Connecticut Department of Ed data, these are currently two areas in which Avon lags behind in the district. Right now. The State average ratio of student per computer is 3.8 to 1. In Avon, that ratio is 5.8 to 1. 138 Connecticut elementary schools begin world languages. This is a challenging financial year for all of us. And I am going to say something that is outside of the box. As I consider how I can afford to support this budget, I have decided that the best way I can use my soon to be arriving Federal Economic Stimulus payment, is to help the economy and invest to Avon schools for the economy of the future. Please support this budget.
Chairman Harrison: I think we are all going to miss the contributions you made while you were on the Board of Education, Sue.
Linda Merlin, 48 High Gate Drive: Hi. I’m sorry so many people have left, but I can’t tell you how gratifying it is to see all of these people from the community here today at this meeting. I have been to every meeting, as long as I can remember, and this is the best turnout, I believe. As well as our public officials who are all here and have put in a great deal of time this year. We all know the obvious cost of increase of our taxes. What about the cost of not increasing our taxes. These costs are very real too. Indeed we have been paying dearly the last few years, and this year in particular, with the budget is so low that the Town and the schools that it will cost us so much more in the long run. Bigger class sizes and loss of programs,
falling behind in technology, inability to maintain buildings in a cost efficient manner. This has all started to happen and will continue to happen even with what is being asked for tonight. Then there are the things that no one even talks about. As colleges get harder and harder to get in to, we can’t even talk about how to give additional support to our guidance department. There are no funds for that. We have lost 2 veteran math teachers at the high school and we can’t even talk about getting experienced teachers to fill their positions. Some of the best programs in the school system are the electives at the middle school and we may not be able to maintain them all next year. The schools may have to eliminate foreign language among the seventh grade, in a day and age when communities are trying to introduce language at a younger and younger age and the benefits are clear. This should be completely unacceptable.
Roaring Brook School is truly overcrowded and we can’t even begin to talk about they should begin to solve their problems because there are no funds there to do what is really needed. Just maintaining what we have is something that has become increasingly difficult and without community support, it cannot be done. Taxes, I know it’s a dirty word and no one wants to vote for more taxes. But while the first speaker tonight said she saw the number of statistics and said ouch. I say, wow, is that really what the difference is. The difference between the lower tax rate and the higher tax rate for the average 50% house. I didn’t do the math, someone next to me did it for me, but it comes to approximately $23 a month is my understanding. $23 a month. I just want to throw in right now, a lot of people have talked about people on fixed incomes. I hope someone on the Board, when I’m done talking, will just
mention what the Town Council just recently passed and was supported as much by parents as by senior citizens in this community, which is a tax relief program for people on fixed incomes. So I hope that someone will just let everyone here know a little bit about that. That’s sidetracking. Anyway, I guess I will just end by saying that perhaps we should all be ready to spend just a little bit more in order to maintain all of the things we have chosen to live in Avon for. I know we need to compromise, but I hope you will not trim the proposed budget too much. The truth is, we simply can’t afford that.
Chairman Harrison: Linda mentioned something that you are probably curious about. The Board of Education and the Town are both experiencing some overspending this year for both budgeted amounts. Each of them has introduced a spending freeze at different times. All of those spending items came about because, remember the budgets are prepared 15-18 months in advance. And nobody anticipated the huge jump in utility cost and the water costs for our fire hydrants. And in the school, we have had just totally unexpected increase in students with special education requirements that nobody could anticipate. So, it’s not because of anything to do with poor planning or anything of that sort. It is because the spending increases came in way after the budgets
were developed. We don’t have a final number yet on the overage, but I can certainly assure everyone tonight that that will be dealt with at the end of the fiscal year when we have the exact numbers. We do have funds available that can straighten out those shortfalls. And doing that will not affect the spending for next fiscal year’s budget that we are discussing tonight. So, although, yes it’s true that there was some overspending, it is and will be managed and will not affect the money available to cover whatever it is that you chose to approve for the next year’s budget. The other thing that was referenced has to do with the program for some tax assistance for lower incomes. I don’t know, John or Phil, does anybody want to talk about that tonight? It will be addressed in the newsletter that goes out at budget time. But, Phil, maybe you can give us a few words, just so that people are aware that it is
out there. It’s not for everybody. It’s an income revenue program, but I think it will be very helpful. Phil.
Phil Schenck: The Town Council has had a program for about 6-8 years, which builds on the State authorized circuit breaker program from households with individuals over the age of 65 and on limited incomes. Those thresholds, the State threshold at the present time, I believe but I may be a little bit off, is $33,500 for a couple. Those thresholds are modified periodically by the State. The Town of Avon has, as I said, over the last 6 or 8 years raised those thresholds independently of the State and we are now up in the low 40s in the Town of Avon. The Town Council has done that on about an every 2 year review process. Last week, they decided to index the thresholds of both the income levels and the benefit amounts, the amount of the tax that is abated to the tax rate. So if the tax rate goes up 3%, the threshold and the credit will go up 3%. If the tax rate goes up 5%, you would have a 5% increase in that. There are State requirement, though, that have to be basically met
in terms of age. And the Town income levels are higher than that, but they are still in place. So individuals that meet those requirements, you are invited to call the Town Hall at 409-4300 and talk with either the Assessor, Harry DerAsadourian or the Social Services Director, Alan Rosenberg.
Chairman Harrison: Thank you, Phil. Alright, other comments?
Bob Paine, 68 Tamara Circle: Good evening. I am sort of a new resident here. You get to be new, if you look back and say I have been living here for 30 years, but I’m not an original Avonite. It’s kind of unusual. Over the past 30 some years, Avon has had a rather enviable position in the Valley and in the State of Connecticut. It is one of the 169 Towns that has had growth, that has had immigration influx of people from Hartford, then West Hartford, then from the Valley and we continue to go in that direction. The reason why, is that the Town is run very very well. We always got a big bang for our buck. The one thing we did not face early on was a bureaucracy that we have no control. Absolutely none. It is mandated, it is
dictated. I have a Bachelor in Science degree in Education, and I can tell you that that bureaucracy starts at the University level. We manufactured needs, we reinvent education every few years and every time someone goes for his doctorate, he comes up with a new plan and new program, a new way to teach math. And now we have English as a foreign language in many parts of the State, and it is being taught that way. Because they have to for accommodating people. Here in Avon, we have gone and swallowed a lot of myths. Myths on school size that are dictated not by the education, but by the Unions and by the teachers unions and also by the education of various Universities throughout the country. There is no magic in class size. Many people in this room were in class sizes of 30 or more, and they were very well educated. We also had another myth. There is a dull shaped distribution of intellect in the human population.
There is a percentage of people that are not very bright. There is a percentage of people that are highly bright, and then the rest of us are all in the middle. And we have Presidents that claim not to be very bright. We have had a lot of them. We had Harry Truman who was a failure, but he was a great President. We had Ronald Regan, who was an actor, who turned out to be not so bad a President. It isn’t really that is what you do with what you get. And unfortunately, we have gotten to a point now where we think that everyone, even people with an IQ of 85, should graduate from Harvard or Yale. First of all, they get entrance and they will automatically get a scholarship to go there. These are all myths, educational myths, and there is not a heck of a lot we can do about them, but to be practical. Right now, however, we face small crisis and that is, the real estate bubble has burst. It has burst and we
stand to actually lose the grand list. We stand to lose property values and I don’t know what is going to happen on the next revaluation, but we are going to lose that. We are a Town that has never fostered commercial development. We had some lucky breaks along Route 44 and here and there some office parks, but by and large, we have restricted development for commercial property in Avon for the 30 years that I have been here. We never got out of the way for them. And we are paying the price for that because it has become a residential mecca. This is the third wave of immigrants to Avon that I have sustained while I have been living here. All I have to say is that we have to be very very careful in what we do on this budget because there are seniors here that are not only facing a heck of a property tax increase, but as one of them said, an income decrease. When you get older, you take your money out of the stock market and put
it into what is known as fixed investments. The current interest rates being paid on some of these fixed investments are lower than they were during the Great Depression. They are extremely low. Some of these people have had an income flow that has been cut 40% - 50% per year. And they are suffering. And I don’t know what we can do. This program that we have from the State mandated on tax relief is ridiculous. That gives them a couple hundred dollars a year out of a $5,000 or $6,000 tax bill. It’s meaningless. You mind as well not even use it. Listen that’s all I have to say. Have a good evening and vote your conscience and do what you want to do.
Bill Neff, 454 Country Club Road: My family and I have been here for 39 years, but it doesn’t get any easier to put our 2 kids through the school system and we estimate that we probably helped educate 2 generations of Avon youngsters at this point. I’m here tonight in a juxtaposition of taxpayers that I have listened to and I covet the fact that there is a polarity in this Town between senior citizens and taxpayers who feel that the budget is….it is not just all senior citizens. We feel that there are going to be a lot of folks in Town who are not making as much income as they would like to. They are living in Avon, the taxes, and they are not going to be very hopeful about being negative about the budget, buy they certainly don’t want to be recognized by their
peer groups as being anti-intellectual. So, bare that in mind. It’s not just the seniors, although the seniors are on a fixed income. In my 30 years in the insurance industry, there were years when the company profits did not come through and the employees weren’t going to get increases. I worked for Connecticut General for 27 of those 30 years and they became Cigna, of course. Business would become competitive and the management would call upon the employees to come up with ways to save money and to make more profit, although we are not in business to make profit, but nevertheless, it is very similar to the way we look at the school board or the Town officers and say, take a look at the budget and tone it right down. And they do as far as they can. But corporations, and Cigna was one of them, and they came in and brought it objectivity that the people in the corporations couldn’t afford. And they came up with ideas
for spending money in other words, they learned to think outside the box. And maybe it’s time, some Town’s have done that. I look on the internet sometimes and in Connecticut school districts in Connecticut are going to consulting to bring in fresh ideas of how money is being spent and how manpower is being utilized in order to get the best bang for the buck of the taxpayers. Maybe, it’s gotten to be that time. I think that one of the things that we have to remember is that thinking outside of the box shouldn’t be limited to the corporate world. Perhaps it’s time to do that here in Avon. Thank you.
Chairman Harrison. One of the points he just made had to do with bringing in people from outside to take a look. About 3-4 weeks ago, there was a joint meeting of the three Boards represented here tonight to discuss the budget and what’s driving it and how do we deal with some of these challenges. One of the results that came from that was a strong consensus to do precisely that. To bring in some people that don’t have a vested interest in how the budget is proposed and just take an independent look, as you suggested. Sometimes somebody can see something that we have been doing it for the same way for 30 years, and somebody might say, did you think about doing it a different way. So, once we get through this budget season, we are going to meeting again
jointly and try to lay out some ground rule of what should be looked at, how should it be looked at, time limits, that kind of thing. But we recognize, something has got to give because we are not going to get vote that we have had. So we will be following up on that. I’m glad that you mentioned it. And it’s something that the details are not worked out, but there will be that effort made just to get some fresh eyes to look at how we do it, why we do it the way we do it, do we have any duplications that we can consolidate, so that will be occurring at some point very soon.
Robin Schwartz, 88 Harris Road: I’ll be brief. I agree with many of the speakers that Avon has had a very enviable past and hopefully will have an enviable future. That’s my concern. I think that fiscal constraints has helped in some ways, but it’s hard because there are some cuts that we really need to have. But, I think we also can’t take things for granted and now is the time to have this budget. So I disagree, well, I think things can get worse. I think things are, this isn’t the worst of times. Things could definitely get worse because it is a fact that we continue to not fund what needs to be funded in the Town through the Board of Education. We may not have an enviable reputation and we may not be able to attract the
kinds of teachers we have been able to attract, we may not be able to keep the kinds of teachers we have been able to keep. And that’s a concern. I am going to be having a significant decrease in income next year because I am an sending off my oldest to college. Many of you in this room knows what that means. Nonetheless, I feel like I can sacrifice a little bit more because my daughter has been through the school system and not only will her parents tell you what a fine education she has had, I think she would tell you that if she was here tonight as well. But that’s what I would like to see continue in the Town. But I do also want to say that, you know, there needs to be, certainly, respectfully requests that if there are areas in Town where people aren’t accessing some of these rebates, that I would encourage you to do so. I know that one speaker said that it wasn’t worth the $500, but some people are saying that
an extra $500 is too much. So I think if people can get $500 and there is some way we can help with that, we should do that as well. So, again, the hour’s late, you know where I stand. Thank you for listening.
Sharon Levine, 98 Cotswold Way: I want to thank the Board of Education and the Town Council for proposing their budgets. I know and can tell that a lot of work went into putting them forth. I just want to say and I think that I gave the same speech for the past 10 years. Same speech. I’m giving it again because there has not been any change. The essence of these cost increases, you know, some of the rise, the utilities are increasing and we are all surprised and we just didn’t expect such a huge jump. But, it’s truly the growth of this community, the cost to educate, the additional people that move it this community and it has generated this huge increase in the Board of Education budget. We know a few facts. We know the Town, the
taxes that are generated from most homes in this community, and I’m not talking about the very very very extremely few very large homes, most homes do not generate enough taxes to educate the children that live within those homes. We know that. That’s a fact. Our spending per student is well in line with neighboring communities. Well in line. And below in some instances. The Town Council, and this is were I think I have my hugest issue, is that the Town Council and the Planning and Zoning have done virtually nothing over the past 20 years to curb this growth. It is this growth that primarily fuels the increased cost to the Board of Education. The impact of this Town turning a blind eye to growth rides primarily on the backs of our children and those individuals in this Town living on a limited or fixed income. And in addition to the fact that we haven’t really limited this growth, we have done very little in
the past few years to encourage commercial property development, which will develop a stable tax base, a more stable tax base for this community. I urge everyone in this room, whether you are for this budget or against this budget, or whether or not you want this community to stay together, all citizens, newcoming and longstanding, contact your Town Council members, contact the Board of Planning and Zoning members and address this complex issue. It is the true cause of the divisiveness in this community. And we revisit it every year and yet, nothing moves forward. In addition, the tax cap placed on the past budgets was an extremely short sighted decision by the Board of Finance. It effect was to merely postpone necessary spending, and as such, we are forced to play fiscal catch-up at the worst possible time. In addition, you have all of these lists that talk about the grand list and the increasing the property taxes. What the Board of
Finance and the Town Council and I know the Board of Education is aware of, but parents in this school are being taxed separately from everybody else in this community. I paid for my kids Spanish books, I paid for my kids to play sports, I paid donations, I have donated books to the library, to all of the PTOs I have participated in and I have done fundraising. Every year I have an unfair share of taxes that is never reflected and respected by the Town Council or the Board of Finance. In conclusion, I have to say I have a huge huge problem with you, Mr. Harrison. The idea that you have someone who wants to spend and someone who is paying taxes tugging at a dollar. I think it is really unfair because I am both people. I don’t want to spend more, yet I am forced by the lack of movement in this community, the Town Council, the Planning and Zoning to think ahead and stop us from tugging at each other. It’s a time to make a change. I also have a problem, Mr. Harrison. I don’t
know if you are aware, but your presentation this evening was a bit skewed. Your presentation was completely anti-Board of Ed. The way you stated the 70% of the budget on the school and the way you indicated that 70% of this budget is paid to the school, as if it were an unusual occurrence. It is standard. That is what most communities do. And you made it seem like the Board of Education was asking for something that stood out separate from all of the other communities. It is not an abnormal occurrence. In addition, the way you see, the slide that talked about trends and budget expenditures and the way you said, oh, look at the Board of Education, it keeps going up. I think that the way you put that and presented it, I thought it was unethical, I thought it was biased and I think it was totally inappropriate. But I do appreciate all of the time and effort that you do put into the community. I know your hearts in it,
but I really wish, I do, and I really wish you would stand outside of the box and realize that when you present it, you present it in an unequal manner, it’s hurtful and it is divisive and I hope that in the future, you will try and rephrase it a little differently. Thank you very much.
Chairman Harrison: Thank you, your remarks, you are right, are generally similar to what you have said in the past, but every year you say it with such sincerity and such passion and conviction that we welcome it anyway.
Kenny Mayne, 10 Old Kings Road: I agree with the gentlemen; he was 4 or 5 speakers back that said that back in our day we had about 30-35 in a room and that’s true. That’s how I got my education in a public school in Seattle, but the education wasn’t as good, and the teacher’s weren’t as good. They weren’t as good as the teachers here. And for those who seem to be throwing out the fact that they are paid a certain amount, that’s because they are talented. It’s sort of a free market system and if you’re talented, you move places where you can get the highest rate of pay, and it’s competitive, so we have very good teachers. And like the speaker a couple back, said that she is just amazed, she is getting more for
her dollar than what she expected. To think that first graders are learning to read, or kindergarteners are starting to read the way they do and everything else that is taught there at the school. It’s not like it’s excessive, it’s not the Ritz Carlton over there. We have 1 ½ janitors. My wife said that they had a meeting the other day and the mother’s were asked to basically come in and clean the rooms every other Saturday because the janitors just can’t get to it. And it’s not that the women believe that’s beneath them, it’s just kind of odd that this system, with all of this tax base we have, can’t afford some of these things. Look at what’s going on at the high school. They are down to two PE classes this year. That is embarrassing. Our children are getting more obese by the day and to present it to high school students that physical education is important. I
know a girl who just got through her fourth SAT test as a junior because it is so competitive to try and go on to college, you need all of this. Community service, she has athletics, she is in music. You need to be entirely well rounded. So, it doesn’t appear to be at all that these things are superfluous or unnecessary. And it does seem redundant to those who still have kids in school and those who don’t. There is some kind of divide, at least by this speaking group, has taken place tonight. So, I agree that maybe there should be even further, some kind of reductions, some kind of way to help those who really truly can’t afford the increase. But, to think that 2.3% is what I think I heard for teacher, that’s barely the cost of living. So, it’s not like we are throwing money away. They do a great job and many of us moved here specifically for the education. Thank you for your time.
Joe Lanzetta, 76 Lofgren Road: I have lived here for about 15 years, 6 of which we did not have a child. I wanted to ask, the woman who talked about the property taxes and the residential property taxes, I wanted just to understand, when a piece of property development and a family is put on it, are they in fact paying enough taxes to cover the services they are getting and if they aren’t why are we doing so much development. Our future, in terms of taxes, by saying our grand list is growing and is that the right thing we want to do. It is growing, but you are losing 10% for each person, are we growing?
Chairman Harrison: First of all, the grand list is not growing anymore. The question, this comes up every year. It’s a very good question. Everybody always seems to know of some Town somewhere in the State that has put a total freeze on building. You can never identify it because it can’t happen. I don’t know, if John, you want to speak to that, or Phil? The problem we have is that this thing in the Constitution called the takings clause. If somebody buys a piece of property that’s zoned for residential purposes, and then plans to build residences on it, the Town cannot simply go in and say we don’t want any more residences. So that’s the challenge that we have. There are Constitutional restrictions on what it
is that the Town can do.
Joe Lanzetta: But the Town can buy that land. But what I’m saying is that there is some kind of analysis that they say, okay, when we put more houses, we are getting more revenue. But at some point, if we pay and bought the land, right, we are paying for it, but then we will not have to pay.
Chairman Harrison: The voters in this Town have always been extremely supportive. In fact, 2-3 issues over the past several years, we purchased a huge chunk of land down at Fischer Meadow, and we purchased the MH Rhodes property. We are in discussions with other large property owners in Town to see if we can do something, maybe development rights or outright purchase whatever. We do explore that and the voters are very willing to approve those kinds of requests. In terms of sometimes people raise the question of, well, can’t you have some sort of impact charge on building. If a builder is coming in and putting up 50 homes or 75 homes, can you charge a big chunk of cash to offset the impact on schools, sewers, etc. And again, there are legal restrictions on
that in Connecticut. We cannot do that. Some States do, but we cannot stop the developer.
Joe Lanzetta: Well, I’m not for that either. I mean, my feeling is that if they own the land and they build, they have a right to do that on their property. But if we wanted to keep the Town small, then he should be rewarded for his land.
Chairman Harrison: If he is willing to sell the land.
Joe Lanzetta: Well, everyone is willing to sell everything at the right price.
Chairman Harrison: Well, my suggestion, sir, this is a good issue. Phil Schenck, our Town Manager would be happy to discuss that with you, not tonight, but it is a serious issue. And it’s not one, unfortunately, that lends itself to an absolute bulls eye type solution, but I appreciate you raising it and I think when you talk with Phil, you will see that we do make significant efforts to keep as much land as we can away from the developers for the reasons you mentioned. Okay. Other questions?
Becky Sahl, 65 Stoney Corners Circle: My family has been here for 8 years. I have three children who are going through the Avon school system, and all respect to all of the problems I’m hearing, people of different age groups and economic levels, we can’t afford to short change our kids. They have 12 years to be in the school system and in that 12 years they become who they are going to be. And everything we can give them in that time, from the finest teacher, which they are having now, from computers, to being able to develop their own personality in terms of the arts, to vent their frustrations and learn to be team players through athletics. We need to give them the best we can give them because once those 12 years are gone, we can’t replace them. I know that doesn’t answer the problems that all of the seniors have, and I feel for that, tremendously, but these kids are going to be seniors too. And if they don’t get the resources and the intellect to deal with the issues
that are ahead of us in this world, we are all going to be, well, they will be, your grandchildren will be much better than they are and possibly be without that kind of support. So I support the budget and I thank you. I hope you will find many solutions for our other problems, but short changing our kids is just not an answer.
Mavis Davis, 39 Timber Lane: I just think we have other problems as a Town and from reading the paper, it seems like the Police are going to get busier and busier because you see that somebody was picked up for narcotics charges every week now, and it seems like maybe the Police are going to need some more help. And I think that social services, the budget is very small and our economy is going down the tube and I’m sure that he is going to need more help with social services.
Christina Meador, 15 Saint Michaels Court: I am fairly new to this Town. For full disclosure, I do have three kids. One has a way to go before she goes through the system, but 2 are in the system now. And I would be remiss if I didn’t say what a wonderful experience the 2 are having. The educators are doing a fantastic job. And if I look here at the salaries, which this I thought was the most interesting document of all. I was looking through it and seeing what should I urge my kids to do when they grow up in terms of the money. And I am thinking a roadway maintainer because I look at that salary and then the salary, I think, of what the teacher is making who taught second grade at my school last year, and I know the group of kids she had to deal with
and how hard that was and how well she did, and that the roadway maintainer, I mean, the stress level, it can’t be the same. I shouldn’t get this specific, but just looking at some of these salaries, I think that a great deal of the teachers and administrators, my hats off to them. And maybe if we have to pinch some pennies, I know many things you can’t pinch. It’s impossible, I have learned a lot tonight. I have heard some interesting comments too. We clearly have a very smart Town here. But, perhaps there could be some reduction with upcoming salary discussions in the more public area. Maybe I’m wrong, but just looking at that, that was my first take away, and, again, I haven’t been here that long, and so I do appreciate the comments from people who have lived here a long time, and some of the stressors you face as well. My parents are in that very same position in their Town. I don’t
think there is an easy answer, but just looking at things, I would say that the education, not one pinch should be snipped from that. It’s already as tight as it can be in my opinion. I’m just one person.
Bob Bullis, 14 Stoney Corners Circle: I have lived here for about 45 years. I just have a few observations that I would like to go through very quickly. And clearly, I think everybody here tonight, including the Boards, recognizes that we are trying to live beyond resources that we actually have. That’s a little frightening. The second point that I would like to make, though, is if we were to sustain a budget increase of 8% a year for the next five years, that means that we pay essential almost 47% more in taxes in the fifth year. That is a significant number. That’s 50% more than what we would be paying today. The next thing, the Board of Education made a presentation and in the second slide, it said adequate instructional books, supplies,
materials, so on. Adequate education is what is required. But, what I’m hearing here tonight is that a lot of people are happy with what they are getting. But it seems to me that we almost have a private school. Like Avon Old Farms School. And so the question becomes one of what is adequate and what’s not adequate. I have trouble when I see, for example, were we are providing parking spacing for the kids in high school to go to school and we are paying for that. When I went to school, I used to have to walk. Now we bus them. But there is just too much now. The last point that I have to make, which goes to the 70% school budget in Town and the union leverage that we have here is one just has to look at what’s happened to US car companies because of union situations in the United States. Number one, General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, which almost doesn’t exist or out of business today. They
are very close to being out of business. What’s happened is that unions negotiated deals that were so sweet that they didn’t even have to work to get paid. And so they drove these companies out of business and now unions are turning their workforce back because they cannot longer sustain those companies. Meanwhile, Toyota comes in here and has become number one in the Nation. I think that everybody ought to be thinking about that very seriously. They built cars as good as Detroit does, as a matter of fact, better. At half of the union cost. That’s all I have to say. Thank you.
Dennis Lanahan, 81 Stoney Corners Circle: I moved here 8 years ago for one reason and one reason only. And that was due to the intact of Proposition 13 in California. Clearly, I saw how not providing the infrastructure for the schools, just absolutely decimated an entire system. I’m not suggesting that the system here in Avon is anywhere near what it was out in California, but I will say that the education is the reason why I moved here and I think most family members that I have met here in Avon have moved here for the school system. And to that regard I think the school system needs to stay the absolute highest priority, which is no doubt that competition as we move forward for our kids will become that much more difficult. And the long term plan, certainly for
my family, was to get through the best public school system that you get, move onto college so they can move out into the real world and not have to move back home, where I will be supporting them for another 20 years. So, to that end, I will support the budget, but I will also hold the school Board accountable for making the best decisions possible with the money that they have. I for one am willing to pay more for my child’s sports. I’m willing to talk them out of having to go to gym class and fill up gym classes. I’m willing to give more money to the booster clubs and support in any way I can in that regard. I think the school district may also take a look at some of the other aspects out there. I don’t know very much about special ed, but that seems to be a very very large chunk of the budget. Maybe there are things that can be done there, but I will say, that I will support the budget. And I do appreciate
the fact that I had this conversation with Dr. Kisiel eight years ago before I moved here and I was banking by kids education on his ability and the school Boards ability to provide the absolute best education for the dollar. And I still support that today and thank you guys for the hard work to make this the best school system possible. And on one last note, Dr. Kisiel, you can keep the decision at 3:00 in the morning to close or open schools, because that has got to be the toughest task. Thank you.
Chairman Harrison: May I ask you for a brief clarification. You said that the education spending should be the priority. Does that mean as we go through out deliberations if we have to choose reductions we should not do it on the education side. Just so that I understand what your point was.
Dennis Lanahan: I think that the education and the formal education is absolutely is paramount, second to sports and things of that nature. At the end of the day, I understand that it’s for our kids to be well rounded, my kids play sports in all three seasons, but I am willing to pay for that because that, in a lot of respects, is extracurricular activities for them. But the formal education, the math and the sciences has got to be priority number one.
Chairman Harrison: Thank you. That’s very helpful.
Leslie Gordon, 70 Cold Spring Road: I just wanted to point out one thing that I don’t think that has been fully developed here tonight. And that is that the parents in this community really contribute to making what, for the seniors who have spoken tonight, believe is a country club or a private school atmosphere in our schools. We have fantastic teachers and I have had plenty of them. I have 2 kids in the school system. A fifth grader and a third grader. But the parents are constantly in the school, and those of you who are parents in the school system know this. Countless volunteer hours by the parents in the school system, I am president of the PTO at Roaring Brook School. I know how much time and effort that goes into the schools by the parents. And I also know how much money they contribute, in fact, I helped at the fundraiser here on Friday night, where we raised $23,000 for Roaring Brook School. And none of that appears in the Board of Ed’s budget. Our school
budget for PTO is $75,000 this year that was raised by the PTO from the parents in our Roaring Brook School. So, I don’t want to, I don’t want anybody to walk away with the mistake and the impression that everything that we get comes from the school board budget. We have had to fill in a lot of gaps over the years, and I know that the demands on the PTO increase year after year after year as the budgets get cut more and more and more. And I am appreciative of the parents at Roaring Brook School and I know the parents of the other schools as well. So, I just wanted to say thank you and I also would say that I support the school budget. I attended many of the school Board meetings this year, and I know that these people are doing a good job and I believe that they are being fiscally responsible and trying to look at what’s best for the whole community, not just the schools, but the whole community. So, and I happened to write that
letter that appeared in the Avon Post that the first woman referred to. And I do feel, in this meeting, that there is some divisiveness. I think that’s pretty obvious. And I would encourage us to walk in each other’s shoes. I would encourage any of you who haven’t been in the schools in 25 years to please come and take a look at what’s happening. Roaring Brook School is bursting right now. There is no extra place for anymore kids in that school. And so I would encourage you, I would be happy to take you on a tour myself, you know, walk you around and show you what’s going on in our school. They are a lot different from when even I was in school 30 years ago. So, anyway, I didn’t intent to speak tonight, but I think that that needs to be pointed out, that there is a lot of extra money that goes into our schools from the parents in the community. Thank you.
Barbara Panico, 95 Stoney Corners Circle: For all of the reasons my neighbors and my peers are saying the same thing, I want to go on the record as supporting the Town budget and the Board of Education’s budget as they stand. I can promise you three votes for the referendum at this point, if it stays this way. Just one other comment, though, when you said earlier that people can cheer or don’t have to cheer because you don’t have an applause meter. I think that that is what this meeting represents. I think you come to us to see what the majority of the people of the Town think will pass, will tolerate. And I think you really do need to look at who is saying what, and how many of us are supporting this budget and try to make your decision based on the
majority and what you hear. Thank you.
Susie Norman, 277 Cider Brook Road: I don’t have any prepared speech, but I do think there are 2 things that I want to share with you. One is that I do hear that a lot of people are saying that the schools are great, my children are happy, everything is wonderful. And I feel the same way, but I think you should know that there is a perception that doesn’t necessarily go with that. And staying to this budget will address this. This is a really small story, but I think that it goes with a bigger meaning. And that is, last year, the junior high field hockey team that played against other teams and they took buses all around the State to play against these teams, did not have uniforms. Every other school had these cutesy little field hockey uniforms and
jackets and this rah rah stuff. And the other parents would say to me, why aren’t your girls in their uniforms today. And I would say, well, I’m sorry, we didn’t get uniforms. I don’t think there was any budget for them. Well, I thought Avon was supposed to be like a rich Town. Why can’t you guys afford your own uniforms? And then I was in the doctor’s office the other day, and the gal who used to be the field hockey coach came in and said, well, I won’t be seeing you at field hockey this year, and announced to the whole waiting room, because your school can’t afford to pay me enough. And, you know, there were people from other Towns seeing these things about our Town. So, I look at that and how it will impact my home values because of the perception is that our Town is not what it says it is or believe it is. But, then I think there will be fewer people pounding on doors to get
into Avon the way they maybe have in the past. That’s one thing. Another thing is, what hasn’t really come up today and I think they support is, you know we talked about teacher salaries, and they have only gotten a 2% increase or something, something small, but the overall budget that is going to be spent on teacher’s salaries is at risk of increasing a lot because there is a State mandate that says for every special needs child, we have to provide, out of our school district budget, financing to support the teacher or teachers that support that child. And that is something that we can’t control and as there are more special needs children coming through all the time, for every additional teacher that we need to support those children, we are knocking out the ability to add a teacher in a classroom, whether there is 19 or 30 kids, it is not a one to one situation. Buy I think that everybody needs to know that that is not up to us to
control and we do want to support these special needs children by the increasing number, and we have no contingency for that at all. So, for all those reasons, I support the budget. Thank you.
Susan Lybeck, 83 Northgate: In the interest for full disclosure, I have 4 children in the Avon school system. There are a couple of points that I want to make. Number one, I know that a lot of work has gone into both the Town’s budget and the Board of Ed budget. And we have elected these people to represent us and to do this job. And I think they are doing a phenomenal job. And I feel that it is in our best interest to give them credit and the expertise they are bringing and all of the factors that they are looking at. And I urge the Board of Finance to do that, and to present both of these budgets to the Town as a whole as presented by both the Board of Ed and the Town Boards. I know that none of us like to increase spending in taxes, and I know
that there are needs in the community, and I would support, and I think that most of us would, additional measures if they are needed to meet that specific need so that our seniors don’t need. I want to have a varied community and I want people involved and for all ages to be comfortable and happy here in Avon, but I don’t think that we want to just set some magic number that says the increase will never go above, that’s throwing a large blanket on a smaller problem. Let’s address that smaller problem. So, I just want to say that I support both the budgets for the Town and the Board of Ed and I will vote for them in May and I hope the rest of you will to. Thank you.
Chairman Harrison: I know that you said at the beginning that you weren’t sure if you were going to speak. And you had to wait until the very end.
Carol Shubinski, 34 Oaken Gates: I am a mom to 3, with 1 in the school system and 2 coming up. I don’t know that I have anything new to say, but I just want to urge the Board to adopt the budget and I encourage the voters. I think it is a strong budget. I feel like the Boards have all worked really hard on it and when you look at the voter turnout in the November election and the voter turnout in the primaries and we have the Presidential election coming up, I feel like the people are really civically minded. I think they are going to come out and vote and I think they are going to support the budget. Most people that I am friends with, that I have talked to are in support of this budget. Although I don’t like to support the tax increases when I
look at what’s going to be cut out to reduce the budget, it’s things that are important to me. When I look at the Board of Ed budget and they are going to cut out a librarian and they will have two elementary schools share a librarian. When that is just such an important part of our kids education, and they do such hard work. And I can’t imagine making the teacher or an aide do the work that the librarians do. And getting rid of the computer teachers in the elementary schools, getting rid of a reading specialist. These are all basic skills that are kids are going to have to have going forward in their educations. So, when I look at the proposed list of cuts by the Board of Ed budget, you know, there is nothing on there that I don’t think is critical toward the kids education going forward. So, I urge you to let it go to the voters and let them decide. Then, if we have to make cuts later, let’s make the
cuts later, but give people a chance to vote yes. Thank you.
Joanne Beers, 48 Oak Ridge Drive: Tom, thank you for responding to the e-mail I sent you. I am not going to belabor the point, but I am in favor of these budgets. I would remind the people in this room that our children are the busiest players in this game. They don’t have a vote in this. We are responsible for educating them, making them prepared to compete in the very very different world than from what we grew up in. And we can have lower taxes, we can have contained taxes. We can do that, but that means having fewer services. We may have fewer policemen, we may have older fire trucks, we may have bigger classrooms, we may have to pay for even more of the things that parents in Town may already have to pay for. I am supporting this budget. It is painful. I am a retiree and my husband is a retiree and we have a 15 year old child. So we are pulled in both directions. I am in favor of the budget.
Anthony Vidovich, 31 Huckleberry Hill Road: I have been sitting here all night and it strikes me that, a point that was made earlier on in the presentations. When we were hearing about the Town budget, we were hearing that certain items along the way shouldn’t be cut, because if we don’t pay for them now, we will pay more in the future. Then I saw the trend line. It seems that over the last few years, we haven’t been paying for things at the school level, in the school budgets. Things like math resources for K to 8 kids. It seems a little odd to me that we are talking about being able to compete with foreign workers, yet we are cutting basic skills. So, now here we are, a few years down the road, and everyone’s in shock that to put basic
things back in the budget is going to cost more money. Well, we didn’t pay for it in the years past. And it has to be put back into the budget. Are we going to wait for five more years where it is going to be that much more expensive and our kids are going to be that less competitive. Not just competitive in school, but competitive as a community. We are better than this as a community. We have a responsibility as a community, yes, we all vote for the bottom line of our pocket, but we have a responsibility as a community to keep these kids supported and to keep this community supported. You are hearing a little bit about that today. I support the budget because it is not just good for the kids, my kids, it’s good for the community. That’s what is going to sustain this community over the long haul. Keep it the way it is. Thank you.
David Altschuler, 18 Volovski Road: I have the benefit of having the experience of having my kids work with people in the special education department. And, yes, the State mandates that, but we have to fund the mandated programs. That means that the other programs fail. And I know we are in a community where none of us are going to let that happen. So I whole heartedly support the budget. The teachers that my kids work with work so hard and they are getting the greatest education, but I can see, if they didn’t have terrific teachers and the support, how one of my children might get lost in the system. Now, I work in a community, in Torrington, and I go to church in a community in Hartford, where so many kids are falling through the system. I have got to tell
you, we are at the far extreme of that and I am thankful for that, but to think that we want to cut resources and start allowing kids to fall through the cracks of the system, is not something I think we want to face as a community. But the reality is, once you start losing the kids, it goes very quickly. Now, I have firsthand experience with that with the magnet school, where early on, they build these great beautiful schools and they start to fund them, but then the private organizations that run them are forced to cut their budget every single year since they were opened and when that happened, the quality of the teachers and schools, and principle and everybody that was there supporting the kids quickly went downhill. And I encourage you very much not to let our kids fall through the cracks of the system. We don’t want to turn into a community where the kids aren’t supported. It makes for a terrible community and we don’t have to. When you look at the increases, $400 or
$500 for the average home, that’s a very small price to pay now, and as everybody’s been pointing out, it’s catch-up. We are not expecting to see 8% every year for the next 5 years as some people suggested we might. This is catch-up or we are just going to keep losing more and more. And that’s not a community we want to live in. so, thank you very much.
Chairman Harrison: Anybody else? Okay, well, thank you very much. As I said earlier, what we will do now is listen to what we have heard tonight and review all of the e-mails. I received about 50 e-mails over the last couple of days and have responded to most. I will respond to all of them and I appreciate that. Thank you all for coming and drive safely.
The meeting adjourned at 10:40 p.m.
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