The following is a look at the Derby budget, which includes all spending proposed by the city and the school district for the next fiscal year.
We’ll show what the budget will mean to your wallet, which city and school officials are getting raises — and the talking points that have been repeated by people in Derby who think the schools need more money and those who don’t.
A public hearing on the proposed 2011 – 2012 budget is scheduled for Monday, May 23 at 7 p.m. in Derby City Hall.
The tax board could adopt a final budget at a meeting scheduled for Tuesday, May 24 at 7 p.m. in City Hall. Public comment will also be allowed at that Tuesday meeting — and Mayor Anthony Staffieri is scheduled to make a statement at the meeting as well.
THE PROCESS
Derby is coming to the end of a budget process that started in February, when school Superintendent Stephen Tracy presented his proposed spending plan to the Derby school board.
The Derby Board of Apportionment and Taxation — the tax board — has been meeting since March, going over all budget requests from city departments. School officials presented their budget to the tax board in late March.
The tax board has five Republicans and five Democrats. It is an election year in Derby. The two sides on the tax board agree on most of the budget — except the school budget. Democrats want to give a little more to the school district than Republicans — but no one wants to give the full increase asked for by school officials.
Note — the tax board assigns a bottom-line dollar amount to the school district. They do not tell school officials specifically what to eliminate from their spending plan.
DIZZY YET? HOLD ON. LET’S REVIEW
TOTAL (school and city) budget initially presented to the Derby tax board: $36.6 million
UNDER CONSIDERATION for next year (2011 – 2012): $35.5 million
The tax board has trimmed 3 percent off the initial budget request. The $35.5 million budget under consideration is roughly $400,000 less than the 2010 – 2011 budget currently in place.
IF ADOPTED today: The tax rate would increase 1.07 mills. A owner with a property assessed at $180,000 would pay an additional $171 on his or her tax bill next year (preliminary numbers).
The agenda for Monday’s budget public hearing follows. Info from the school budget is listed below the document.
THE SCHOOLS:
Initial request: $19 million — a $1.2 million, or 7.25 percent, increase.
Tax board now considering: Giving the schools $18.3 million — a 3.6 percent, or $639,000 increase.
Q: Will there be layoffs in the Derby school district?
A: The school board’s initial spending plan presented to the tax board carried a 7.25 spending increase and called for the elimination of four teaching positions in the school district. That is two teaching positions at the high school, a teaching position at Bradley and a teaching position at Irving. School officials have said more reductions are certainly possible.
Q: Why the heck did the school district ask for so much more money?
A: School officials, including members of the school board, say that Derby has traditionally under-funded the school system. There is more on this issue below, under “Talking Points.”
WHICH PUBLIC EMPLOYEES ARE GETTING RAISES NEXT YEAR?
Just about all of them.
Derby teachers are two years into a three-year contract.
They received no raise in the current budget, but they are getting 2.5 percent raises next year, according to school district Superintendent Stephen Tracy. They’ll get a raise the year after that, too.
Tracy addresses the teacher raises in the following video, which was posted on the Valley Indy in March. More raises listed after the video.
On the city side of the budget — all union members are receiving 4 percent raises.
Last year they received a zero-percent increase. The contracts were initially signed thinking the economy would be in better shape by now, city officials have said.
Here are some of the raises for key personnel on the city side of the budget, with an explanation provided by City Hall:
(Note:
The figures are taken from a hand-out of the Derby preliminary budget given out by the tax board earlier this month. They were double checked with City Hall via e‑mail.
Note also that Derby is operating on a 53-week payroll in the upcoming fiscal year. It impacts employees in different ways and leads to some cloudy dollar amounts on paper.)
Assistant town clerk: $42,300 to $44,025 next year
Four percent raise
(union)
City Hall custodian: $38,960 to $41,319
Six percent raise
(union, plus 53-week pay)
Community Development Director: $83,960 to $85,574
1.9 percent raise
(Because Derby’s payroll is 53 weeks next year)
Derby Library Director: $60,174 to $63,183
Five percent raise
Fire Marshal: $65,152 to $67,758
3.9 percent raise
(contract tied to City Hall union contract)
Parks and Recreation Director gets a $5,000 raise, but it only brings him to $20,600. See previous story.
Police Chief: $100,815 to $106,862.
Six percent raise
(Tied to the City Charter, which says if police union members get a raise, so does the chief — plus 53-week pay period)
Total police patrolmen wages: $1.26 million to $1.31 million.
Three percent raise
Note: Variety of budgeting and salary factors at play here — patrol increase is actually 4 percent)
Street commissioner: $80,543 to $82,092
1.9 percent raise
(Because Derby’s payroll is 53 weeks next year)
Workers in the various classifications at the Department of Public Works are also getting raises
Town clerk: $67,972 to $70,741
Four percent raise
(As per rules in the City Charter)
Some individual city salaries that are staying flat:
Mayor’s Chief Administrative Assistant ($78,409), Building Inspector ($72,880) Mayor ($55,000), Senior Center Executive Director ($48,360), Treasurer ($12,500), Corporation Counsel ($9,500).
The sanitation line item in the city side of the budget shows a drop from $1.3 million this year to $1.2 million next year.
The city is not replacing a deputy director of finance whose salary was $30,365.
TALKING POINTS
There is a legitimate disagreement in Derby concerning the school budget. Here are some of the points that have been stressed during this budget season.
Q: Is the Derby school district under-funded?
A: Yes, according to the school district, where officials point to data from the state Department of Education that shows per-pupil spending in Derby from 2004 to 2008 fell below not only state averages — but below similar school districts in the state.
Click here to read information the school board gave to the tax board.
Referring to Derby High School, the authors said:
“The school currently has an excellent team and many excellent teachers, but the continued battle of having to face no curriculum coordination, no certified librarians, not enough textbooks for all students, larger class sizes and an unresponsive Board of Education and a city governing body that turns a blind eye to its young people and their pressing needs may cause them to abandon this very high cause.”
Click here to read the report.
A: THE SCHOOL DISTRICT IS NOT UNDER-FUNDED, say Derby officials on the city side of the budget.
Mayor Anthony Staffieri said the city has been giving the school district as much as the city can afford — and his administration is responsible for building a new middle school.
Staffieri is particularly worried about the school allocation this year, because of the impact gas prices, new state taxes and the economy in general is already having on Derby residents.
“(The school district’s) solution is ‘give us more money,’” Staffieri told the Valley Indy in April. “How about some creative thinking? How about things that don’t work, you stop doing and you change it? How about what these salaries are for teachers that work 183 days out of the year? You get into this conversation and you could spend all week on it. Let’s just use some common sense. Common sense and accountability.”
Regarding the NEASC report, members of Staffieri’s administration said it relies too heavily on comments from local school officials.
City officials also say that they give an additional $1.3 million to the school district that does not show up in the school’s budget.
The number Derby city officials are using includes the principal paid on the Derby Middle School construction bond ($485,394) includes various insurance policies ($182,716), worker’s compensation ($160,504) — along with Department of Public Works services ($111,179), crossing guards ($21,840) — and the salary and benefits for a school resource (police) officer ($46,862).
While pointing out that dollar amount, the city is also taking steps to transfer some of those costs to the school district.
(Side note: ConnCANN, a group that advocates for public school reform, is pushing state lawmakers for a “common chart of accounts” regarding education spending and budgets in Connecticut. “Right now, widely varying district accounting practices make it nearly impossible to compare budgets and spending across districts in Connecticut,” according to a ConnCANN blog post.)
Staffieri’s administration has also said school administrators make too much money.
A review by the Valley Indy shows that Tracy, the Derby school district’s highest paid administrator — is the lowest paid school superintendent in the lower Valley.
Here are the base salaries for Derby school administrators, according to budget information provided by Derby City Hall:
Superintendent: $133,900
Special education director: $116,941
Business manager: $99,840
High school principal: $123,472
Bradley principal: $115,865
Derby Middle School principal: $119,464
Irving principal: $115,865
A review of school salaries by the Valley Indy shows that 19 — or 9 percent— of the school district’s 206 employees make a base salary of $80,000 or higher.
POSITIONS CUT
School district officials point out that they’ve done much during the last few budget cycles to cut costs in Derby Public Schools.
Since 2008, officials say the school district has lost 16 positions due to budget constraints.
They include:
- The assistant superintendent
- Seven teachers
- Three librarians
- 12 paraprofessionals (11 hired back as required by state law)
- Two clerical positions
- A custodian
- A security aide
CLICK HERE TO READ EVERYTHING WE’VE PUBLISHED ON THE PROPOSED DERBY BUDGET.
