Woodstock CT Café

For whatever reason, the Villager re-published Lindsay Paul’s Letter to the Editor this week (5/4/07) without the derogatory title.

“Single or double quotation marks around a word will suggest to some people that one is using that word in a special or peculiar way and that one really means something else—or in this case that the word “importantâ€? is entirely bogus.”

I read Lindsay Paul’s Letter to the Editor of the Villager published on Friday, April 27th. Her letter had a very specific purpose that was stated at the very beginning of the article – “…to correct factual inaccuracies and misleading statements…� published anonymously three weeks earlier in a previous ‘Sound Off’ article under the ridiculous title “Taxpayers Faced with Out-of-Control Budget�. I say ridiculous because a budget is not a budget until it is ratified and there IS a democratic process in Woodstock that seems to be acceptable to a majority of the voting citizens in Woodstock.

This anonymous sound off article is just one more example out of hundreds of scurrilous attacks perpetrated over the last year on the Woodstock Board of Education and the preK-8 school system coming from members of the Citizens for Prudent Spending, the CPSacademy website, and members of the Woodstock Academy Board of Trustees, who are one–in-the-same and all of whom are bent on discrediting the Woodstock Public School System and the fine people who run the system, teach in the system, and provide state-mandated oversight of this system by serving on the Board of Education without compensation. The endless attacks on the school system come in the form of erroneous and deceitful published statements in the Villager, comments left at the Café, pdf documents and videos posted thoughtlessly at CPSacademy.org, abusive reoccurring Freedom of Information Requests, and even lawsuits. Those of you who read at the Café know who these destructive people are and can count their names on the fingers of one hand… or maybe two hands. Read the rest of this entry »

When I read the Villager article about the Selectmen asking for $65,000 to repair the roof of the Town Hall, I was reminded of an emphatic pro football cornerback shouting “This is MY house and I’ve got to protect MY house…� after a blowout victory. In this case the Selectmen were finally proclaiming that they were going to fix THEIR house by “…appropriating not to exceed $65,000 from the general fund balances for the purposes of re-roofing the Woodstock town hall and repairing any related water damage to town hall. This project has been recommended by the Board of Finance as an emergency expenditure requested by the Board of Selectmen to be accomplished at the earliest possible date.�

But being somewhat dyslexic I started to read this article more creatively by inserting the word “salt� in front of the word “leak� or “water� and changing a few structural terms (shown in italics).

The article goes on to read ‘ “The town shed has a severe salt leak in the floor and salt water is pouring down into some of the neighboring houses’ wells,â€? said Selectman Delpha Very. “There has even been some damage to the plumbing on the lower floors of the houses as salt water trickles through the ceilings and floors of the higher floors.â€? Read the rest of this entry »

The First Selectman of Pomfret calls Woodstockians “the Shiites and Sunis.” Wake up and see the writing on the wall ‘big man from Kurdistan’. This is coming to Pomfret. ‘Whiteman from Town’

For the ease of comparison, the following figures are Woodstock’s per pupil spending without special ed, transportation and construction costs for either system. So, these are ‘apples to apples’ figures of regular education per pupil spending.

FY 04/05- WA = $ 9,082 per pupil; preK-8 = $ 5,996 per pupil

FY 05/06- WA = $ 9,126 per pupil; preK-8 = $ 6,191 per pupil

FY 06/07- WA = $ 9,550 per pupil; preK-8 = $ 6,711 per pupil

FY 07/08- WA = $ 9,978 per pupil; preK-8 = $ 8,370 per pupil *This figure is based on the initial proposed BOE budget and a PK-8 student population of 910; or
preK-8 = $ 7,689 per pupil **This figure is based on the reductions imposed by the BOF and a student population of 910 (unlikely); or
preK-8 = $ 7,365 per pupil ***This figure is based on the reduction imposed by the BOF and a student population of 950 (more likely).

As a result of Tuesday night’s presentation of the budgets, the BOF has determined there will have to be $836,919 reductions in order to meet the restrictions of Prop 46. Based on last year’s split the BOE 74% will have to make $619,320 in reductions, leaving the General Government 26% reducing their budget by $200,860 (or, cutting the $200K ‘excessive’ budget figure from open space[still leaving them $50K] and then finding $860 somewhere else). In other words there will be no actual fiscal impact of the BOF ordered reductions to the General Government, but there will be a reduction to the Education budget, resulting in a reduction of nearly $1,000 in spending per pupil.

Made it to the BOF meeting Tuesday evening (4/24). It was at the WES rather than the town hall. Poor turnout.

Woodstock Academy presented first. State of the art presentation. WA Highlights: Current spending per student low compared to other schools at $9425. But the graph was using 04-05 levels. Nonetheless, low compared to the denser population schools. Budgeted enrollment 459 students, a change of 0.44% with a decreasing student to faculty ratio of 14.61(lowest was 14.03 in 96/97. Tuition increasing 4.34% with a total expenditure increase of 2.38% or $287,295.00. Little time for questions…BOT meeting.
Next was the WPS budget presented by Lindsey Paul and Dr. Baran. Budget increase proposed at 10.91%. or an increase of $1,542,131.00 . This increase includes a WA tuition increase of 4.99% (a little higher than WA proposed) or $481,776, salary contract increases of $322,478.00. Other increases include new staff salaries, 2 buses, textbooks, SPED, computer , maintenance/repairs, heating. Total budget $15,681,355 minus revenues (state 35.83% + town 64.17%)= $5,618, 762 = net budget $10,062,593.
Next, General Govt. budget. Highlights include: A less impressive presentation. Total budget increase of 10.62% or $537, 840.00. Town counsel fees were taken out of each budget and placed in a separate section. So keep this in mind when evaluating supposed decreases in departmental spending. Total counsel spending was $44,000.00. Some of the increases were due to salary increases, mileage, dues, conferences, fuel, added staff in Finance ($39,530.00), town clerk printing/lever machine $7500.00 , insurance and benefit increase of 7.73% ($48,673), open land aquisition increased from 50K to 250K, Fire protection increased from $117,000 to $123,000, police protection increased 62.41% from $4355 to $7073, highway dpt went up 17.94%!! or $241,514.00 (primarily due to desired purchase of a dump truck, back hoe, and pickup), public health/rec/welfare up very little at 0.64% (but you will be glad to know that dial-a-ride is still alive and well!).
Lastly, the total budget requests for 07/08 is $21,285,247.00 (Ed $15,681,355, Gov $4,520,074, redempt. of debt $1,083,818.00). Cuts needed to meet Prop 46 = $836,919.00. Read the rest of this entry »

The Norwich Bulletin has publish their Editorial Opinion entitled “Our View: Woodstock dispute needs state assistance” A Woodstock citizen left the following comment with this article “Along with this article you (the Norwich Bull) cite a political action group www.woodstockctcolalition.org as a colalition of parents when in fact this is a group that is totally focused on attacking the public K-8 school system on behalf of Woodstock Academy. This website has the support of a group called “Citizens for Prudent Spending” whose main interest is to starve the K-8 system so that the Academy can take a larger slice of the budget pie. To read the real story see www.woodstockctcafe.com and it archives of stories on this problem.”

In the Town budget proposal: $250,000 for open space; Fire Departments’ new equipment savings account up $6K to $123,000. Over the last four years, the Fire Departments will have received $455,000 if their current budget passes.

Have the Treasurer and Board of Finance been ignoring this law about state mandates over these many years while our town services have been unnecesarily declining (except for the fire department) and problems like the salt shed contamination allowed to pollute unabated? Why haven’t our First Selectmen Wetzel, Very and Wholean and the BOF Chairs Everett Shepard and Shirley Rapose thought to explore the issue of the proper calculation of State Mandates under Prop. 46, when many citizens have raised it during Board of Finance and other town meetings? Now, we can add this malfeasance to the growing number of examples of the failure of our Boards of Selectmen and Boards of Finance over the last decade to do their jobs. Wouldn’t it be incumbent on our Board of Selectmen to investigate this issue immediately so that the Board of Finance, who thus far has admitted to having no ability to apply Prop. 46 for the current budget proceedings, can gain some direction?

Will the Board of Selectmen and Board of Finance dismiss this discovery because a private citizen has uncovered a means by which to apply Prop. 46 in a legal and reasonable manner in the context of state law? Obviously one of the critical phrases “state mandatesâ€? in our local ordinace has a definition available under Connecticut law to determine its meaning. Read the rest of this entry »

A public hearing will be held at 7 p.m. May 3 at Griswold Middle School for the public to discuss a proposed $35,943,000 elementary school project and a proposed $33,962,000 middle school project.

Scholarly comment from one of the Trustees of Woodstock Academy, “you scumbags…” refering to Cafe’rs

I think the BOF and BOE need to further investigate the definition of State Mandate as an exception under Prop 46. This calculation has historically been in the range of about $100-$125,000.

The State of Connecticut under CGS Sec. 2-32b(2) has defined the term. “State mandate means any state initiated constitutional, statutory or executive action that requires a local government to establish, expand or modify its activities in such a way as to necessitate additional expenditures from local revenues, excluding any order issued by a state court and any legislation necessary to comply with a federal mandate�.

The State of Connecticut has gone further and actually catalogued all state mandates and updates this list every year. Essentially the state reviewed its entire regulatory and statutory structure for any requirement imposed by the state on a municipality that requires an expenditure by the municipality. The list is 535 pages long and includes hundreds of items, including the entire cost of the town’s public school system and Woodstock Academy. Read the rest of this entry »

• Please cite the study you referred to on college education in the 90’s. I would be interested in reading it.
• In reference to the administrative staff levels and teacher aide staffing, do you have a cited comparative analysis that indicates Woodstock’s staffing levels are out of line with the other communities in the state?
• Where do the staffing levels of the Academy fall in comparison with the other high schools in the state?
• What methodology did you use to account for the diverse timing differences of building cost investments by all the different towns?
• I’m not sure that I understand your usage of the term ‘recapitalization’ in regards to the buses. Are you saying that we are refinancing them?
• I also do not understand your reference to ‘legal fees’. Please detail which of these fees you feel are inappropriate and why?
• I’d also be interested in your explanation as to why you feel that student enrollment should be able to directly correlate and/or be the only factor impacting the overall growth in education funding.
• I’m uncertain what the ‘cafeteria debacle’ was. Can you explain it and what was adverse financial impact on our budget?
• What particular ‘construction projects’ are you citing as expensive?
• What study has been done that indicate special education provides babysitting jobs and not remedial education for special needs children? Does the breadth of special education’s responsibilities begin and end with remedial education?
• How is the methodology for reporting education costs to the state different so as not to include ‘many expenditure by our local system’. Do all the other towns use a different reporting process?
• How is it that our continual standing of being in the bottom of the state with our per pupil spending constitute the inappropriate request for funding from the town?

Answering these points would allow us to actually have a discussion. ‘Rendered’

During the last week the Cafe averaged 247 visitors a day with the highest number of visitors, over 300, on Tuesday. About 20% of these visitors are sporadic, one-time hits from outside of the quiet corner. On Tuesday, there were 896 page turns. Friday was also a big day. Over the course of 1-2 weeks there are about 300-350 returning unique visitors from the area.

It is interesting. When I first moved to this town and heard about Prop 46 I thought it was a good idea. The expansionary bias of politicians is a very real phenomenon. In fact, my very first posts on this site were very much in favor of that concept. Limiting that expansionary tendency, at least in theory, is a very good idea. But I couldn’t really understand the points of the opposition so I asked to see a copy of prop 46 in order for me to be able to confirm or discredit my preconceptions about how it worked.

What I found surprised and shocked me. It was and continues to be a very flawed ordinance. As I’m sure many of you know it totally ignores the effects of inflation and relies totally on growth in the grand list while limiting revaluation of the grand list. So in effect the town must grow just to keep place with inflation. But that’s not a realistic solution as growth means an increase in demand for services removing any benefit in keeping pace with inflation. What the town needs to make prop 46 work is a steady stream of DINKs (Dual Income, No Kids) to move in and build large new houses. Read the rest of this entry »

You are preaching to the choir (speaking to ‘Taxpayer Too’) about the need for greater voice in the Academy and the fact that the change has to come at the state level. But that won’t fix the current education funding issue and I don’t think it should be viewed strictly in that light. So let’s take a look the three items and what changing them will accomplish.

1) Greater representation at the Academy - Under the Breen proposal the town of Woodstock still won’t have 50% representation on its own. So maybe we can control the tuition rates, maybe we can’t. Even if we can lower growth in Academy tuition rates all it will lead to on its own is the Academy and the K-8 students being somewhat underfunded. However, the K-8 will be not quite as underfunded as they are under the current situation. Prop 46 and the 73/27 split will still squeeze these two over time until they are both in dire straights.

2) Changing the 73/27 split to some other percentage or percentage based on relative need for the town. What will this accomplish on its own? Well the Academy will still be getting the tuition it sets unilaterally and the K-8 is more likely to get a greater proportion of total town funding to meet its needs. But that will be accomplished by taking funds away from the rest of the town budget. In the short term this is OK as I believe there is a fair amount of fat there. In the long term Prop 46 will continue its squeeze in real buying power for the town’s budget and eventually we will be back exactly where we are today.

3) Amending prop 46 to account for growth in the town and growth in inflation (something that is currently missing). Could be some other change or even removing it altogether. What will that accomplish on its own? Well enough money could be collected for the entire school system and allow it to grow based on demand and to tread water against inflationary pressures. However, the arbitrary 73/27 split will still more than likely lead to one part of the town budget being over funded (education or the balance of the town budget) and the Academy still is setting policy and tuition rates effectively with no say by the sending towns.

Read the rest of this entry »

I understand your point (to ‘HMO’), I really do. But I think that other people may see different solutions to the same problem. As you have pointed at there are three dynamics at work here that are really causing problems for the K-8 students:

1) The reality of the situation is that the Academy can set it’s tuition rate (within reason).
2) There is a strange split between education funding and funding for the rest of the town that would seem to be based on nothing more than tradition and ease for the BOF.
3) The 800 lb gorilla, Prop 46 which puts an overall cap on spending (with exceptions).

As I understand it Taxpayer’s position is that as long as the academy is charging a tuition rate within reason that the solution lies with altering the second two items. People like him may also feel that the disparity between K-8 and academy spending has not diverged enough given the different educational requirements to currently be as critical a problem as others (he might, I don’t know). As such they could reasonably be thought to be operating within the guidelines of Horton V. Meskill (you might have saved me some time if you gave me that cite up front). Read the rest of this entry »

Putnam’s proposed 2007-08 budget is $20.4 million, a $932,000 (4.57%) increase over this year’s $19.5 million budget. The town operating budget proposed is $4.2 million (79.4%).

There have been several mentions of the Municipal Finance Advisory Task Force (MFATF) at this site. I am a member of the MFATF and think perhaps the readers here might benefit from some background information on the Task Force.

When originally conceived, I believe the idea was to get a group of citizens together to look at the budget, how it is developed and how that process could be improved. I believe originally, the idea came out of the Board of Finance (at the suggestion of a citizen), but they apparently felt they didn’t have the ‘authority’ to put together this group and thus it was bounced over to the Selectmen. The First Selectman then put this group together. I am not aware of what criteria Wholean used in making her selections, as for myself, I requested to serve.

The name, Municipal Finance Advisory Task Force, was pretty much the extent of the direction that the group received. We spent several weeks initially defining our purpose and focus. I believe what we finally accepted was the following:

“The mission of the Municipal Finance Advisory Task Force (MFATF) is to examine the following in order to determine potential improvements:

1.) the budgetary revenue sources and utilization processes in the town of Woodstock;
2.) the budgetary determination and decision making processes; and
3.) the means by which the public are informed of the above.

The MFATF shall communicate its findings with the Board of Selectman (BOS), the Board of Finance (BOF), the Board of Education (BOE) and the people of Woodstock.â€? Read the rest of this entry »

A Taxpayer : My recommendation stems from Ms. Wholean’s suggestion in her letter to the State Leg. that we have local systems and forums in place to deal with these issues. I supported her stand, yet after some thought I have noted in my statements that although I agree, these systems have seemingly failed. Why is it that they have failed? What are the barriers they face? How can we make them better? Isn’t this worth asking? You have been diligent in reminding me of two such barriers, the Academy and the charter structure under state law. I have been diligent in reminding you that I see the failure as being part of a much larger problem. When I state that problem you claim that I am ideologically blind. I am only blind as to why you can’t understand my rationales. But let’s move on. The BOF has seemingly been one part of the failure but they have created a task force to deal with issues that they recognize as problems and to bring credibilty to these issues they face through a non-partisan citizen driven task force. Read the rest of this entry »

Democratic CT tax reform “bill includes changes in virtually every major tax - the income, sales, cigarette, estate and real estate conveyance taxes - along with the property tax credit ($1000). The bill also would create a state earned-income tax credit for the working poor, a controversial measure that has been opposed in past years by Republicans and conservative Democrats. About 90 percent of those paying the state income tax would see their taxes cut under the Democratic bill, while the state’s wealthiest 10 percent would expect an increase.” CT Local Politics

The budget increase in Academy tuition is final as it has come through their budget process and been voted on by the Board of Trustees and sent off to all of the sending towns. That increase is less than the budget increase proposed by the Woodstock BOE at this time, as has been noted by Mr. Wetzel repeatedly. However, what you (A Taxpayer) and Mr. Wetzel are referring to is the budget increase that the Board of Education has sent to the Board of Finance as of March 22. That budget is what the BOE believes is a needs based budget. Soon, the Board of Finance will cut the amount requested by the BOE. Ultimately, BOF will appropriate only that amount which it allows under its exclusive determination and not more than what Prop 46 allows. BOF has not calculated the Prop 46 limit yet even though they have met twice since BOE and BOS submitted their budgets. When everything is said and done, everyone will see that the amount that the Board of Education is allowed to spend under whatever BOF calculates to be the Prop 46 restriction will be substantially less than what you are now calling the BOE’s increase. Only then would a comparison between the Academy budget increase and the BOE budget increase be meaningful. Talking about the BOE’s current increase in its current form fails to acknowledge the normal process and what will inevitably be a smaller amount available to BOE when the Town votes on the final budget. Read the rest of this entry »

I note that the Academy has based their 2007-08 tuition rate on 459 Woodstock students enrolling in the Academy next year while the BOE has estimated 486 students for which Academy tuitions will have to be funded. Which is the more accurate number?

If the Academy bases their tuition rate on dividing an expected number of students into their total budget for the coming year, then it would be advantageous to underestimate the number of students from each town because the tuition rate per student would be higher than if it was calculated by a higher number of actual students. Consequently when a higher number of students actually enroll the next year, the Academy will charge the tuition rate calculated by underestimating the number of students. This means that the tuitions collected for enrollment of the unexpected students will be all gravy, e.g. pure profit. If 10 more students enroll from Woodstock than projected, then this gravy will amount to $113,290 (pure profit). If 20 more students enroll than projected by the Academy, then the gravy will amount to $226,580 (pure profit). Read the rest of this entry »

I think we can all agree on the following stats:

$14,139,224 was the town education (BOE) budget for 2006-07.
$583,968 was the total student transportation costs within this budget.

$4,657,432 was the tuition for 473 Woodstock students at the Academy.
$188,287 was the transportation costs for the WA students (32.2% of the total students).
$134,000 was the Special Education costs for WA students (from the BOE budget).
$145,912 was the construction costs (from the BOE budget).
$5,125,631 was the total paid from the BOE budget in 2006-07 to the Academy.

$9,013,593 was the amount left in the BOE budget for the preK-8 system.

$10,836 was the total amount paid per pupil for the 473 WA students.
$9,370 was the total amount paid per pupil for the 962 preK-8 students.
$1466 was the difference in cost per pupil between WA and preK-8 students.

$493 is the increase in WA tuition proposed per pupil.
$11,329 is the cost per WA pupil proposed for 2007-08.

How much does the education budget have to increase to accommodate this increase in Academy cost and all of the other inflationary costs? Read the rest of this entry »