Sentinel Source
January 15, 2010
But move by Monadnock committee doesn’t sit well with some
SWANZEY CENTER — One week after the Monadnock Regional School Board voted to slice $200,000 from next year’s proposed school district budget, the budget committee opted to put nearly the same amount back in.
The committee agreed on a budget proposal of $31,694,597 following Thursday’s public hearing. This figure — which is $194,325 more than the school board’s proposal of $31,500,272 — will be the number voters can adopt or amend at the district’s official-ballot first session next month.
The budget committee’s vote restored most of the money the school board had cut for two maintenance jobs and a maintenance management position. But that doesn’t ease the danger that all three people will lose their jobs. Because, while the budget committee sets the budget number that goes before district voters, the school board controls how the money is spent.
In addition, while suggesting money be added back into the budget, committee Chairman Wayne S. Lechlider of Swanzey made no mention of sparing the maintenance staff. Instead, he derived his more than $194,000 addition with the hopes of keeping the biology, technology education and Spanish teachers at Monadnock Regional Middle/High School whose jobs were slated to be cut under the school board’s budget proposal.
Lechlider’s proposal also included adding back $24,700 for staff training, summer work by a guidance counselor, job-related travel and technology-education equipment and supplies.
Still, by hiking the budget proposal, the budget committee may have stirred a brewing fight with the Monadnock School Taxpayers Association.
“The $31.5 (million dollars proposed by the school board) makes sense,” said Richard E. Bauries, a Swanzey resident and president of the citizens’ organization. Bauries said the taxpayers association “made a deal” with the school board last year — which he later told The Sentinel wasn’t a formal agreement but rather a “thank you” to the board for being financially conservative. Last year, the association supported a high school building renovation article, according to Bauries, and refrained from circulating its publication that has, in the past, argued with many of the school board’s proposals.
However, he cautioned the budget committee, “If you’re going to add a lot more to the budget, then our support starts going the other way because people cannot afford that.”
Bruce W. Barlow, also a Swanzey resident, and chairman of the school board’s community relations committee, warned the budget committee about making a foe of the taxpayers’ association.
“At the current level (of the budget), we have an ally rather than an adversary,” he said, which he described as especially important since voters will also be asked to pass the next phase of a renovation project at the high school.
“If we raise the budget too much, we’re not going to have the support of the taxpayers association. My job (as community relations chairman) just got infinitely harder.”
However, Colline M. Dreyfuss, a Swanzey resident and former school board chairman, retorted, “The budget committee and the board should really look at the facts based on their own integrity and not by some threat from some other outside organization.”
This year’s proposed budget of $31,694,597 is $286,013, or 0.89 percent, less than the $31,980,610 budget Monadnock voters approved in March. As was the case last year, the budget proposal is less than the default budget, which the budget committee set at $32,507,904.
That number will kick in if voters defeat the budget proposal in March. State statute requires the default budget to reflect the current year’s operating budget plus debt service and contractual obligations and minus one-time expenditures.
So what exactly is a “one-time expenditure?”
On Thursday, this became subject for debate, as budget committee member Cornelius “Neil” F. Moriarty of Richmond attempted — and failed — to remove $160,000 from the default budget for a legal settlement because he said it’s a one-time expense.
Dassau told The Sentinel that while he didn’t recall the specific total of the settlement, Moriarty’s estimate seemed “very close.” Because of a confidentiality agreement, Dassau declined to confirm this money was for the settlement of a lawsuit from former Monadnock High School principal Daniel E. Stockwell.
But Moriarty told Thursday’s meeting crowd, “If you don’t know who the person is, you can go around the corner and look at the picture.” One of two pictures on the wall of the high school’s front hallway is of the late Stockwell, who launched a lawsuit against the district that was settled last year.
Regardless, Dassau said, whether the settlement counts as a “one-time expenditure” that can be included in the default budget warrants some interpretation.
“It’s not a truck. … You put in a new truck in the budget, you get your new truck, that’s a one-time expense,” he said.
Brian S. Gallagher, interim business administrator, backed Dassau up — questioning how $160,000 can be removed when it was never in a budget line item to begin with.
“To take out this $160,000 for a one-time item that was not appropriated for would seem not to be reasonable in following the intent of a one-time appropriation,” he said.
- The official-ballot first session is scheduled for Feb. 6 at 10 a.m. at Monadnock Regional Middle/High School.
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