DERBY — After a three-hour meeting and seven votes, the members of the Derby Board of Apportionment and Taxation adopted a $48 million preliminary budget Thursday with a mill rate increase of 1.98.
People can share their thoughts on the budget 6 p.m. Monday June 22 during a public hearing that will be held online using the Zoom platform.
Visit the City of Derby meeting calendar for the information needed to participate in the meeting.
The tax board is scheduled to vote on the budget at a meeting immediately after the public hearing.
A single-family house assessed at $112,000 would pay an additional $222 in taxes next year if the budget is passed as is.
The tax board could opt to make additional changes Monday.
Walking into Thursday’s meeting, the tax board was considering adding 2.28 mills to the city tax rate.
The tax board flat-funded Derby Public Schools for two years running. The preliminary budget approved Thursday gives the district an increase of $445,000.
Members of the tax board, longtime member Carlo Malerba in particular, had many questions about the school budget for Superintendent Matthew Conway and business manager Mark Izzo.
The questions centered on whether the school district used grant money to avoid layoffs or programs cuts over the past two years.
Derby schools are among the lowest performing in the state. Because of this, coupled with the fact Derby is among the most economically distressed communities in the state, the city gets extra help from the state to reform its public schools.
However, the state money can’t replace local dollars, according to the state law that set up the “alliance district” program.
Izzo told the tax board the school district was able to make it through two years without new local dollars by relying on the alliance district money from the state. He also said that ability is coming to an end.
The school leaders said they expect an uptick in alliance district money for the next school year, but a decrease in federally-backed education grants.
The tax board had been considering giving the school district an additional $680,710, the majority of which was to pay salary increases negotiated with unions.
The Derby tax board votes on budgets for every department in the city, then votes on total appropriations and revenue before voting to set a mill rate.
The tax board agreed on the vast majority of department budgets, except when it came to education, where it took seven tries before all agreed to allocate an additional $445,000 for education.
The school district previously agreed to give the city $380,000 of school money that wasn’t spent this year. That dollar amount includes items such as transportation, since the school buildings were closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The city will hold that money, with the caveat the schools can ask to use it should they need additional dollars for special education.
Jim Gildea, chairman of the Derby Board of Education, said he was disappointed the tax board opted to trim his board’s request.
“I was disappointed in the reduction of our budget by $230,000. We cannot make Derby the type of City that it has the potential to be and one that people want to move into by cutting all services and not funding education properly. The three-year trend is simply not good,” Gildea said in an email.
The chairman also asked the tax board to be careful when talking about special education students.
Members of the tax board, such as Chris Carloni Thursday, have mentioned several times that educating some Derby kids with disabilities averages $100,000 per child. Those are kids whose needs cannot be met within Derby schools, so they attend specialized schools for which the local district picks up the costs, as described in federal and state law.
On Thursday tax board member Brian Coppolo asked whether taxpayers are considered when districts create individualized education plans for students who need help (a process governed by state and federal law).
“I believe that the Tax Board walks a very fine line when it comes to children with disabilities and the comments they make about these students and families publicly,” Gildea said. “These are children and families that suffer with learning disabilities. We do our absolute best to be cost-effective as possible but at the end of the day we need to educate them and treat them with love and compassion and not publicly continue to make them sound as if they are a burden.”
