ANSONIA – While Mayor David Cassetti’s administration says his proposed budget fully funds city schools, the Ansonia Board of Education has not actually voted on a recommended budget for the coming year.
The nonvote underlines how the budget formulation process in Ansonia has changed under Mayor Cassetti.
Previously, the school board used to vote on a budget in public, and then send the budget to Ansonia City Hall.
The ultimate decision on the school district’s bottom line – and the bottom line only – would be voted upon by the Board of Aldermen, or, before a 2014 charter change, the Board of Apportionment and Taxation.
The Ansonia Board of Education website archives meeting minutes and agendas back through 2018. A review of those minutes found votes on budget adoption on each of the following dates:
2018: Jan. 18
2019: Jan. 9
2020: March 11 (the minutes for this meeting are not posted online; however, the budget does appear as an ‘action item’ in this agenda)
2021: April 21
2022: April 20
2023: No vote
Public school systems in Derby and Seymour follow the same general procedure, and these minutes show that Ansonia schools did the same thing – until last year.
The new procedure in Ansonia takes the formation of the school budget out of the public’s view. The school budget request is a combination of public employees from the district and city hall, according to Valley Indy interviews.
That bottom line is made public in the mayor’s budget request.
Earlier this year Ansonia Superintendent Joseph DiBacco described the new procedure in an email.
“The school business manager, along with the board chair and myself, developed a draft copy of this budget request. The information was continually reviewed by the BOE staff and information on costs and class size increases were presented for discussion with the city administration,” DiBacco wrote.“Working with the mayor and his staff, the BOE was able to come to a mutually agreeable budget request that was significantly higher than many other local school districts.”
The superintendent said the school board would probably vote to adopt a budget at a meeting on May 8, but that did not happen.
At that May 8 meeting, Ansonia Board of Education President Rich Bshara said the budget was being designed primarily by school administrators in tandem with the city finance department.
“I’m hopeful that once we finally resolve a number with the city, that Chuck (Carey, the school business administrator) will come and give us full detail of the budget,” Bshara said.
According to Bshara, the school budget was written by Carey, the superintendent, and Assistant Superintendent Steven Bergin in weekly meetings.
Bshara, who is also the city’s former Assistant Comptroller and is currently the city’s “audit risk and compliance specialist,” told The Valley Indy that he didn’t see a need for the board to make a detailed budget request public.
“I’m looking back at my city side and saying, ‘Board of Ed’s just a department like every other department,’” Bshara said. “The other departments don’t vote on their budget before they submit it to the city for action. And so I just didn’t feel we needed to vote on it as a group for the budget request.”
However, the law does not view the school district and the department of public works as the same. School boards are elected officials whose duties and responsibilities are specifically laid out in state law. Click here to read the law.
Bshara said the board does not have a formal budget process it must follow, and that the current arrangement allows for better collaboration between the board and the city.
The new process raises transparency questions and what constitutes the school district’s ‘ask.’
In January, the board publicly posted a budget summary – but took it down after The Valley Indy asked about it.
That January document showed the school district asking for a $2.2 million increase to operate the schools next year.
The Cassetti budget, released three months later, allocates an additional $1.8 million.
The superintendent said at the time that that document was posted by mistake and shouldn’t have been made public. School officials would not answer additional questions about the dollar amounts from January.
Bshara said that the board is not hiding anything.
He pointed to the district’s monthly financial reports, which are posted publicly in the board’s meeting agendas and include the current year’s budget.
“If you look at our monthly reports that get filed with the agendas, our entire budget is listed in those,” Bshara said. “We’re not hiding anything.”
The new process lacks the acrimony that was previously commonplace in the city. In 2018, the school board sued the Cassetti administration, saying it improperly withheld $600,000 in funding. That lawsuit was settled after the city agreed to pay $500,000.
Cassetti administration officials point out the school district is happy with the new system, and that the school district is getting the money it needs.
The mayor’s proposed budget, which was unveiled on April 25, includes $37.6 million for the Board of Education. That’s about 56 percent of the city’s total $67.1 million proposed budget.
The mayor’s budget includes a $1.8 million, or 5 percent, increase for Ansonia schools.
Those are the dollars Cassetti focused on while unveiling his proposed budget in April.
“My budget represents strong, continued support for Superintendent Joe DiBacco and the board of education’s budget, with an overall 5 percent increase for our students and teachers,” Mayor Cassetti said in April.
The Ansonia Board of Aldermen are scheduled to adopt a budget by May 30.
The next regularly scheduled meeting of the school board is June 12. The board could adopt the bottom line from the mayor’s budget as its own at that meeting.
“We don’t really have control over the BOE process, but the process here is that I speak to my Department Heads and in this case I spoke to Dr. DiBacco and the President of the BOE Rich Bshara,” Cassetti told The Valley Indy. “We agreed on a percentage increase and along with the other increases we put the budget together. I submit it to the BOA and BOAT. It’s the same process we have used for the past three or four years and it seems to be working. If the BOE Superintendent and President are satisfied, then I am confident we are giving them what they need. The increase is a recommendation I make to the BOA and BOAT for their consideration.”
