You’ve probably long forgotten the brilliant insights we posted some time ago here. That’s OK, given the delights of spring and other diversions, we forgive you.
But we’re here today to reignite your interest in the issue. The School Board is meeting tonight to choose from five FY13 budget options presented by the School Superintendent, Mr. Paul Perzanoski.
You can find his presentation to the School Board here:
http://www.brunswick.k12.me.us/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/April-26-3.pdf
Your humble correspondent is a ‘PowerPoint Warrior’ who goes way, way back, and whose collected works easily number in the thousands of charts. We always drafted our presentations based on the principle that if someone missed the live delivery, the printed version of the pitch should be specific enough to explain the message when read after the fact. From our perspective, Mr. P is still in the pre-warrior category in such matters.
So let us summarize his presentation for you, before he gives it, as best we can. He offers five options for the School Board. For reference, the current year budget is $33.3 million.
Option 1: Proposed budget of $34.1 million; ~13% property tax increase for schools alone.
Option 2: Proposed budget of $33.7 million; ~12% property tax increase for schools alone.
Option 3: Proposed budget of $33.5 million; ~11% property tax increase for schools alone.
Option 4: Proposed budget of $33.4 million; ~11% property tax increase for schools alone.
Option 5: Proposed budget of $32.9 million; ~9% property tax increase for schools alone.
You can see for yourself how that 4% enrollment decline in the last year is driving down our total costs. But the ‘decline’ must be coming to an end, because the Super adds this projection in his presentation: a further increase of 6% in property taxes for FY14 ($1.8 million) and 5% for FY15 ($1.4 million).
And those are ‘starting points,’ which means before the real estate agents, Board members, and schoolies run around with their hair on fire. So welcome to a minimum of a 20% property tax increase in the next 30 months, for the School Department alone, and before knowing what the Municipal side has in store.
Boy, are we gonna have us some excellent schools! Apparently, 20% more excellent than they are now, which is akin to ‘more perfect’ or ‘more pregnant.’
Some thoughts.
- The School Board will vote on their choice tonight without a Teachers Contract document in their hands, so their insight into what the consequences of the contract are is zero. And the Super’s slides don’t give any hint, do they?
- The $10-20 million in lurking capital expenditures will not arise as a discussion item, nor will it’s effect on future tax increases be addressed.
- The School Board will wring their hands, gnash their teeth, and in the end, declare that ‘they can’t in good conscience forward a budget to the Town Council that slashes education spending yet again, shortchanges our children, and sets the town back by a mile.’
- The School Super will tell the media reporters after the meeting that he ‘did his best to provide options that were responsible and kept tax increases in line, but the Board felt we just couldn’t keep undermining the obligations we have to the children, the parents, and everyone in Brunswick.’
- When the Town Council gets the budget, they will wring their hands, gnash their teeth, suggest $100,000 be cut from the highest option, and commit to ‘addressing this crisis in the years ahead.’ And then send a school budget to the voters that raises property taxes by 13%, because they ‘have no real choice.’
You can come up with your predictions and compare them to ours. We’ll be happy to post them here if you wish.
Or you may have something else to wish for.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
We’ll check the news reports tomorrow to see how closely they adhere to our crystal ball vision from the outer reaches.
No comments:
Post a Comment