BOF Meeting Results

The Board of Finance voted unanimously tonight to cut the budget by $1.607M, $429K on the town side and $1.178M on the BOE side. This is essentially equivalent to the amount of salary increases on both sides.

The tone was generally somber and overall very non-partisan; nearly all members spoke about the fact that deeper cuts would be devastating to services and education. The fact that deeper cuts were not made is I think in part due to the large turnout and the fact that the budget was not soundly defeated.

This still represents a 4.4% tax increase (due to revenue and fund balance issues) and will by no means be an easy budget to pass so I urge people to continue to do what they can and stay involved, although I do think this budget is passable if people stay involved and vote. We will be looking at getting PACT members together in the near future.

The next step will be wage negotiations with the town and education unions, as is happening around the state.

As I stated during public comment tonight it is my belief that for significant wage concessions to occur on the teacher side the budget needed to go to referendum. If the cuts had been made prior to referendum (as was the motion that was defeated at the March BOF meeting), I believe that the teachers union would have (given the timing in CT) been much less willing to negotiate and that the cuts would have been in personnel, and would still not necessarily have made the budget easier to pass. Following a strong attempt to pass this budget, with a definite result, it is my hope that town unions and teachers will be willing to approach wage concessions to minimize the impact on staffing cuts. Guilford teachers are in the unenviable position of being among the first in CT to face the consequences of a failed referendum, and I hope they will set the tone appropriately. I also hope this is not construed as being anti-teacher, or advocating breaking contracts, but simply reflects the current situation that the town has spoken and the money is not there, and will come either from raises or from personnel with a direct effect on programs and teaching.

There is a recent article about this in the Courier:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/topic/hc-teacher-layoff-union-greencol-apr...

Perhaps the biggest danger is polarization-- I would encourage people to continue to write to the paper in a positive and community oriented way; particularly any who did not write on the first go around and to emphasize the importance of programs (including the elderly tax relief!) as well as the importance of schools and school programs to the community, and so forth.