Seymour First Selectman Kurt Miller is not happy that his town’s school system could lose $700,000 in state funding.
“We’re going to have to spend a lot of time lobbying our state representatives to make sure this doesn’t happen,” Miller said.
Gov. Dannel Malloy unveiled a two-year $40.6 billion budget Wednesday that includes increases of roughly $40 million apiece to Hartford and Waterbury, while the state’s smaller towns, such as Groton, Milford, and Miller’s own Seymour are seeing cuts, at least when it comes to the “education cost sharing” (or ECS) grant.
The Seymour budget for the 2017 – 2018 fiscal year is being put together now. It goes to voters in the spring.
Miller said Seymour was looking at a possible tax rate decrease of about .20 or .25 mill. That’s probably not happening if Seymour loses funding.
“We’re now probably looking at a mill rate increase, even though we’ve cut spending,” Miller said.
In an email late Thursday, Yashu Putorti, chairman of the Seymour school board, said a cut like that would be bad for the budget, to say the least.
“Our budget certainly could not handle a cut that big,” according to Putorti. “I’m guessing that the taxpayers would have to pick up most if not all of it. This is no different than any other state budget cut our governor makes. He keeps reducing state spending by forcing the towns to pay.”
The First Selectman was particularly angry at Hartford city government. The city is in terrible fiscal shape, but Miller said the governor wants to spend millions to help the XL Center, an arena.
“At some point we have to realize it’s these terrible fiscal decisions that have put this state in a hole. At some point they have to learn how to say no,” Miller said.
The state needs to get its house in order, the First Selectman said.
“Look, I don’t mean this to sound like bragging, but I came into office at roughly the same time as the governor. We faced the same economic climate,” Miller said. “We’ve been working slowly and methodically on a financial plan that got us in good condition. The governor has done the exact opposite, and now he needs all the towns to bail him out.”
