LETTER: 'If My Grandchildren Attended Clinton Public Schools...'

It has been pointed out by the Town’s self-appointed truth squad (SATS) that a hypothetical budget increase would cost median taxpayers just $15 per month.  If two thirds of that or $10, is unnecessary and we repeat that unnecessary $10 per month increase for the 13 years that one of my grandchildren is in school in Clinton, that adds up to $10,920.  At 4% compounded interest per year in a tax-free 529 education savings account that produces an additional $2,376 in interest.  If two generations are spared that in unnecessary taxes, double the amount is potentially available for third-generation advanced education. 

On the other hand, if it produces large education budget surpluses, which do not benefit my grandchild’s education in anyway, it is returned to the Town to feather an already more than ample undesignated fund.

Hummm.  Let me think about these two alternatives. 

Is my money better invested in an undesignated fund that earns the Town less than 1% in interest and maybe it is used to buy a $195,000 Public Works truck (for example); or is it better set aside to help fund advanced education for my grandchild?  Which is more likely to truly benefit my children and theirs?  I don’t need a financial advisor to help me answer this question.

Over the last two years, cumulative Education surpluses have added up to $1.5 million.  That is after recent budget referendum defeats have reduced Education budgets $1.2 million.  Would $2.7 million in cumulative Education budget surpluses have been better for anyone?

Now on the table is a $1 million Education budget increase on top of a $538,000+ acknowledged surplus. This amounts to a $1.5+ million increase in actual spending. 

The budget adds 11 full time equivalents to staff while enrollment is projected to drop 22 students.  Actual per pupil cost jumps from $15,644 (or less) to $16,618 or up 6.2% (or more)…unless of course the proposed budget generates yet another large surplus, which it almost certainly would needlessly do.

In 2012 the CTA supported the proposed $170,000 budget increase and it passed on the first ballot.  The mislabeled "NO voters” are not against kids or education.  Taxpayers are against oversized budgets that produce surpluses that needlessly cause hardship on taxpayers and inflate an already uncompetitive mill rate.  That, in turn, discourages commercial development and shifts more of the tax burden onto residential property taxpayers while inflating the mill rate further. 

It is a vicious cycle that is impossible to break as long as the children are misused to manipulate public sentiment.

The Superintendent argues that previous surpluses could not have anticipated the savings from teachers’ retirements or employee health care cost containment.  One year is a windfall.  Three years is gluttony.   Fool me once shame on you.

The Superintendent has convinced the Board of Education that these budget increases are the product of state mandates and that they are powerless to run on leaner budgets.  He has succeeded in transforming the Board of Education into a rubber-stamping pep-squad for the administration’s inflated budgets. 

He accomplished this at least in part by sandbagging the current proposed budget.  He inaccurately inflated the current year’s budget by $193,000 above the amount approved and appropriated at referendum in 2013.  Thus the proposed budget increase was not the $1.1 million as presented, but $1.3 million.  Where is Clinton’s SATS when an Education budget is so blatantly misrepresented to the Boards of Education, Selectmen and Finance?  See a brief documentary at http://youtu.be/oEfequROzoM. 

A justifiable budget should be able to be honestly and forthrightly presented.  This one, from the beginning, was not.

On June 4, Clinton goes back to the polls.  The Education budget is still at least $600,000 too high.  This year's oversized budget becomes next year's State minimum budget requirement.

The excuse that $590,923 of the budget increase is contractual salaries is revealing.  That amounts to 70% of the total increase in salaries and benefits, meaning that 30% of the total increase in this line is discretionary.

Blaming Special Services is inaccurate and unfair.  Special Services is only slated to increase 1.2% and represents less than 1/10 of the total increase.

The SATS, which implies that all of this is “lying with statistics” recently published a flyer that said Clinton’s mill rate dropped 17% since 2004.  While true, it glosses over the real facts, which are that the 2005 revaluation jumped the grand list 70% and dropped the mill rate.  Actual tax levies have gone up 46% over that period; almost double the consumer price index. 

What is relevant is that Clinton’s mill rate (25.43) is uncompetitive with Madison (20.39) Westbrook (20.98) and Old Saybrook (15.20).  No one pays per capita taxes.  No one pays equalized mill rates.  They are irrelevant factoids.

One Board of Education member asked, “why would we needlessly raise taxes, we are taxpayers too”?  That is indeed a puzzle.  Perhaps it is because the litmus test for the PTA to support Board of Education candidates is unwavering devotion to spend whatever the Superintendent proposes.  Or the Board honestly believes State mandates render them powerless.

Members of the Board who are or have been educators may simply have a limited business perspective of what is necessary, realistic and cost effective.   I can’t explain business and legal professionals who sit on the Board and approve and defend such glaringly unsupportable business decisions.

For the administration, it is simply another year and another opportunity to needlessly soak taxpayers that must not be squandered with a reasonable budget increase.  Almost anything will be said to justify the unjustifiable.  See “Truth or Consequences” at http://youtu.be/IioVG0XrVAs.

Budget surpluses can’t be both for the children and returned to the undesignated fund.  This is a method by which adults use the children to manipulate public sentiment to extract more from taxpayers that ends up in the Town’s slush fund. 

As a parent and a grandparent, I have not always agreed with my children and on this decision we might part ways.  But I do not think voting NO is a purely selfish decision.  I would rather see my money earning 4% and available for purposes of education, which is what the voters who approved previous Education appropriations intended, rather than in the Town’s ample undesignated fund used to buy Public Works vehicles, for example. 

It is insulting when people use my grandchildren or anyone else’s to manipulate public sentiment to inflate and then drain taxpayer funds voters intended for education for other purposes instead.

I was born at night, just not last night.  

Vote NO June 4.