The Board of Finance will hold what could be its final workshop tonight on the proposed 2010 – 2011 budget.
The meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. in the Norma Drummer room in Seymour Town Hall. The agenda is posted below.
In late January, the school board voted on a proposed $30.7 million spending plan for the next school year. That budget carried a spending increase of $1.6 million — or 5.6 percent — over the current school budget.
Click here to download the minutes from the school board’s January meeting.
In their recent budget workshops, members of the Finance Board, citing the poor economy, have been trying to keep the school board’s request limited to a $500,000 increase.
School officials counter by saying they need at least $972,000 just to meet contract increases.
At a budget workshop last week, the Finance Board upped the allocation to $734,546 — still far short of what educators said they need.
At last week’s meeting, Schools Superintendent MaryAnne Mascolo was asked if the school board would be willing to go back and ask the teachers and staff to accept less money than they had already agreed to — a zero percent increase in salaries not required by contract.
“I’m not going to go back to people who are taking a zero when there is no other budget in town where everyone is taking a zero,” Mascolo said.
Mascolo and other administrators have already vowed to give back their own pay increases out of fairness to the employees “taking a zero.”
Meanwhile, the Finance Board has scheduled a public hearing on the 2010 – 2011 budget for Thursday, April 8 at 7 p.m. at the Seymour Middle School, 211 Mountain Road.
Copies of the budget will be made available at the library, the town clerk’s office and on the town’s Web site.
