Ansonia’s Board of Education on Wednesday approved a budget request for 2014 – 2015 seeking a year-over-year increase of nearly $1.9 million — with no discussion.
That’s because there’s not much to talk about, school board President William Nimons and Superintendent Carol Merlone said after the meeting. There’s nothing in the spending plan besides what the district needs next year to prevent layoffs.
“This is a bare bones budget,” Nimons said.
“There’s nothing new. Nothing,” Merlone said. “We tried hard to come down as far as possible.”
The Numbers
The school district received $28 million in this year’s budget, a year-over-year increase of $1 million, or 3.7 percent.
School officials say the district’s contractual obligations will see increases totaling $1,077,087, or 3.94 percent, to salaries and benefits next year alone.
Tuition and transportation costs are due to increase $69,656 next year. All other costs — for things like insurance, textbooks, software — total $44,238 in new dollars.
Beyond that, Ansonia is faced with a $465,000 reduction in its “Priority School District” grant awarded by the state, according to a handout given to school board members Wednesday.
And the city is projecting an increase of $223,568 in tuition and transportation for students requiring special education placements in other towns.
Altogether, school officials said the city’s schools need $29,879,549 in order not to give out pink slips, an increase of $1,879,549, or 6.71 percent.
But both Nimons and Merlone noted that the city is due to receive $676,818 more in Educational Cost Sharing money from the state in 2014 – 2015, saying the school district’s “net increase” would be 4.3 percent year over year, or $1,202,731.
School officials will give detailed presentations on their budget proposals to Aldermen in the next weeks, Nimons said, and then to the city’s Board of Apportionment and Taxation, which has the final say on the budget, barring a tax increase that would force a referendum.
Nimons said school board members met twice last month for administrators to present their requests for the board to review and revise.
Reaction
This is the first school budget to be presented under new Mayor David Cassetti’s watch.
He helped unseat incumbent Mayor James Della Volpe in November with help from Ansonia taxpayers angry at last year’s tax increase which was driven, to some degree, by education spending.
But given the fact that voters swept Cassetti and a new Republican majority on the Board of Aldermen into office on a platform that promised cost-cutting, won’t City Hall have sticker shock over any increase in the school budget?
“All the vibes I’m getting right now from everyone, all the new board members and the new mayor, they want to be very supportive of education,” Nimons said after the meeting.
“If we don’t educate our kids where do we all go?” Nimons went on. “If they’re going to support the kids they have to support the budgets.”
Municipalities are obligated by state law to fund their school systems at least as much as they did the year before, and the district is getting a little more ECS funding from the state.
But Nimons said Cassetti “wants to go beyond that, a little bit, within reason, as long as our budget can support it.”
First Ward Alderman Edward Adamowski, a Democrat and former chairman of the Aldermen’s finance committee, predicted Wednesday that Aldermen and the tax board would end up trimming the school district’s increase by about $900,000 or so.
If the increase isn’t enough, they know parents will show up demanding more money for schools, he said. If too much, angry taxpayers will demand cuts — or just vote in a new administration, as they did in November.
“Our job is to find a happy medium,” Adamowski said.
He suggested Cassetti’s administration might be in for a rude awakening when they start putting all the budget numbers together — and they’ll have to make some tough choices if it comes down to cutting either taxes or city services.
“The campaign rhetoric is now going to meet reality,” Adamowski said. “All the campaign slogans of ‘We’re going to do this, we’re going to do that,’ reality is going to set in and they’re going to find out just how hard it is.”