Voters Thursday rejected both the town and school budget proposals and now the Board of Finance is looking to make “some very painful cuts.”
The $50.72 million proposal would have increased tax bills by 8.4 percent.
Town officials Thursday attributed the vote to the bad economy.
But they warned that cuts to the budget will mean reductions in town services and jobs.
“This is not going to be easy,” said Mark Thompson, the chairman of the Board of Finance.
Big Increase
If both the Board of Education and town budgets had been approved by voters, the new tax rate would have been 27.98 mills.
The budget proposal represented a tax rate increase of 2.18 mills, or about 8.4 percent increase.
That meant a homeowner with a house assessed at $200,000 would have paid about $430 more in taxes next year.
The rejected budget was a $1.6 million, or 3.38 percent, increase in spending over the current year.
The Results
Of about 9,500 registered voters, 1,794 people turned out to the polls Thursday.
Registrar of Voters Ron Skurat said that was a high figure for a budget vote.
But Board of Education chairman Edward Strumello and First Selectman Paul Roy said they were disappointed more people didn’t show up.
“There are countries where people would die to have the right to vote and we take it for granted in this country,” Strumello said.
The Board of Education budget proposal, at $30.1 million, was less popular than the town budget.
Only 702 people voted in favor of the school budget, while 1,090 people voted against it.
Meanwhile, 849 people voted in favor of the town budget, while 953 people voted against it.
Education
The budget proposal included $30.1 million for the Board of Education — a 3.3 percent increase in spending over the current year’s budget.
Educators had asked for an increase of $1.6 million, but were given only $970,000 more in this proposal.
Superintendent of Schools Mary Anne Mascolo said trimming the school proposal would mean possible layoffs.
“I’m just disappointed that the budget went down,” Mascolo said. “What people need to realize is their taxes will still increase, but their services will now decrease.”
The school budget hasn’t been funded to adequate levels for the past seven years, according to Mascolo.
“There’s nowhere else to go but personnel,” Mascolo said.
Town Side
Roy said he didn’t know yet where the town could cut from its budget proposal, but he said he would begin looking for places on Monday morning.
“I think people understand there has to be some kind of an increase,” Roy said. “I think we can find some room to make some preliminary cuts on the town side that hopefully won’t result in any personnel cuts.”
Thompson said it will come down to a decision between wants and needs.
“We’ll look at required services, and the desirable services, and start making some choices,” Thompson said.
Next Steps
The Board of Finance is scheduled to meet at 7 p.m. on Tuesday and again at 7 p.m. on Wednesday to discuss the budget proposal.
The Board of Finance will come up with another proposed budget — and there will be another referendum for the proposal May 11.
For a full list of articles on Seymour’s budget proposal, click here.
The BOE is Top-Heavy; eliminate 3 or 4 top administrators and the teachers won’t bear the brunt of budget cuts, and programs could remain. Four from the top would save approx. $500,000, and that is a nice start. When contract negotiations open up, the first topic should be benefits, everyone should be paying around 20% of the premium.
I agree about the BOE being top heavy. Town’s people are NOT going to approve a budget without someone up top being either being eliminated or taking a substantial PERMANENT pay cut…”donating” part of your salary is a scam and we all know it! Come on BOE — take a very long an hard look at the top, stop drinking Mascolo’s kool aid and think about what YOU should do — what any PRUDENT business owner (you) needs to do to be profitable.
I think they should increase the budget, not decrease it. I think people need to understand that we’re already underfunding education. Cuts are not the answer, increases are needed. Either that, or just submit the same budget again until the voters get it through their head that there is no more room for cuts.
It’s amazing that less than 20% of the eligible voters come out and vote on issue as important as this.Peole love to complain and then do nothing to try and change things.
This town will never get where it needs to be with a poulation that just doesn’t seem to care enough to take ten minutes out of one day and vote.
To Valley Resident:
It’s just a fact that throwing more and more money at a broken system doesn’t work. Most of any budget increase just goes to Admin. Salaries. Here is your proof about Test scores vs. dollars spent.
http://www.datamasher.org/mash-ups/spent-student-and-sat-scores#table-tab
fedup2009:
Those statistics are completely worthless. it even says so on the site.
Common sense tells you that if you provide more education (which costs money), the students will be better educated. Its also obvious that when students are better educated, they get better jobs/start companies which are more successful, and jobs creates income. Its been proven that when education goes up in a town, county or state, revenue goes up right along with it.
Want to solve the financial crisis and/or prevent it from happening again? Spend more on education for our children. This is a no-brainer.
To Valley Resident:
Throwing good money at a broken system will NOT improve education, that’s what common sense tells us. I agree that better educated students will get better jobs, and increase revenue in their towns, but funding this broken down system will not lead to better educated students. The first problem is the top-heavy administration, second is a BOE with too many personal ties to the education system (a former principal as the chairman is the fox watching the hen house). Third is people that sit back and say more money, more money…..’Do it for the children.’ If I thought that fully funding The Superintendent’s request would actually benefit my kids, I would have voted for it; no questions asked. I will keep voting NO, because it is the only recourse we as voters have. You and “read this and think” would have us fund what ever they put forward, then write letters to the BOE, and the Boards of selectmen and finance for years and years while nothing gets done about it. Maybe we can start our own grassroots organization, like the Seymour Citizens for Education; How about “Seymour Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility.” What all of you seem to forget is that property values also go down when your taxes are too high, and all services are low. KEEP VOTING NO UNTIL THEY CUT FROM THE TOP.
fedup2009:
you’ve provided no evidence that the system is “broken”, nor have you identified what is actually wrong with the system. Not only that, but you seem clueless as to what the increase in the budget was to pay for. If you had attended any of the public meetings put forth by the superintendent, you would have known that the extra money was for PROGRAMS, not staff.
So, by voting no, you’ve just voted to REDUCE EDUCATION of our children.
Its uninformed people like you that have made Seymour schools some of the worst in the state.