Woodstock CT Café

Sandra Frederickson, Chairman of the Board of Trustees at the Academy, announced on WINY this morning that Kim Caron is their number one choice to replace Richard Foye as the Headmaster of Woodstock Academy. Mr. Caron is currently the Superintendent of Schools for the Region 4 school district in southeastern CT half way between New Haven and New London (see the map below). Apparently Mr. Caron was also assistant Headmaster at Norwich Free Academy before taking the Region 4 position. We wish Mr. Caron the best, if he decides to take the Headmaster position, and hope that his appointment will lead to a better relationship between the Academy and the K-8 school system.

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by Newcomer 

I just posted the following this morning at the “WT” blog. It was in response to a letter from Mr. Rosendahl that is posted there. Since it’s possible that not all Cafe visitors frequent both sites, I thought I’d post it here too just in case anyone might want to discuss similar ideas.

There was a post from Kevin Ford here at the Cafe not too long ago that said that more money might be found from savings in oil costs and in switching to a more standard benefit plan for the teachers. So hopefully, we won’t need to make as many cuts as we think. But if we’re doing worst-case scenario planning here, I guess I would like more information regarding the role and responsibility of these coordinators before deciding if they can be cut without adverse effect. I would like to know how other schools with a similar student body size handle their coordination of State testng for 2 schools. Is this something that can reasonably be done by one person? What other responsibilities do these coordinators have that would also have to be picked up by someone else? Read the rest of this entry »

Mayor Mark Boughton of Danbury speaks about Difficult Times, Tough Choices. He says “Property tax reform should be the No. 1 priority of our state government in the current economic crisis.”

by Kevin Ford 

I understand your point (to A Taxpayer) that you would like the BOE and other boards to push through what we think we need in the budget to the voters and letting them shoot it down, but there is a high cost to doing that and I’m not talking about a political cost. Figuring out things by committee is extremely inefficient. As it stands we barely have enough time to really do a good job hashing through the budget process. The longer we take advancing a budget that has no chance of passing the poorer job we will do crafting a budget that we can get passed because it takes a lot of time to do right. The absolute worst time to be making the hard choices is when we are finally backed into a corner and under severe time pressure after a referendum failure.

As you point out there is a good reason why Dr. Baran makes that initial higher budget but the value of pushing a budget that is a non starter quickly diminishes as time goes on. In a different year such as last year, with a different environment, the utility of pushing through “what we feel we need” a budget is higher. Even if/when it does not pass the cuts are likely not deep or as difficult and can be done reasonably quickly. But that is not the case this year. Read the rest of this entry »

Whether Joe Klusek, CPS, or the UnTruth appreciates this or not, here is how well BOE education spending (K-8 and Academy) has been managed in Woodstock. Residents of Woodstock should appreciate this because it represents reduced taxation compared to 161 other towns. These per pupil comparative cost data are from the State’s website: http://www.sde.ct.gov/sde/cwp/view.asp?A=2635&Q=322152 (Latest data available 2006-07).

“Surprise: Durable goods orders jump 3.4% in February” see USAToday . Also, sales of new homes rose 4.7% in February to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 337,000 from an upwardly revised January figure of 322,000 and mortgage applications jumped 32% in the latest week as average interest rates on 30-year loans fell to 4.63%.

Industries that seem most relevant to Woodstock are retail trade (consumerism), construction (builders), wholesale trade (dairy), and education and healthcare (schools, medical practices and hospitals). The plots below come from a forecast by Moody’s Economy.com for employment trends in Connecticut – past, present and into the future – for sectors that seem most relevant to Woodstock. Overall, CT appears to have hit bottom in this quarter (1stQ, 2009) and recovery of job losses that began in the 1stQ 2008 is projected to occur in the 1stQ of 2010. This recession began in December 2007. 

See our previous article “Our Current Recession Compared to Others.” The Great Depression lasted 43 months. This current recession is projected to last about 26 months which would make it the longest recession by far since the Great Depression.

Retail on the left and construction on the right (retail trade means the sale or rental of goods and merchandise for final use or consumption; e.g. sales to consumers).
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When I look at the activities of the Untruth/Coalition with the likes of Schultz, Powers, Rapose, Maggie, Rosendahl, Richardson and a few others, I am reminded of the 1970′s horror movie “Night of the Living Dead.” This was the movie where undead dead people wandered around neighborhoods looking for live flesh to consume. These undead weren’t very strong but when two or three of them ganged up on one person, the undead usually had a meal for themselves. Their prey in Woodstock is a handful of members of the Board of Education. Like in the movie the undead zombies weren’t very smart compared to the intelligent, more accomplished BOE members. Unfortunately one of the zombies infiltrated the BOE and became a conduit of warped ‘impressions’ about the activities at BOE meetings to the other zombies. This all gets written up at the UnTruth website by deadbeats who don’t have jobs. Read the rest of this entry »

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by Taxpayer (in response to Dean’s statement)

This past Thursday Dr. Baran presented a budget with a 3.56% increase that essentially protected all the programs threatened by a 0% increase and preserved the contractual agreements between the district and its employees. Perhaps this was in response to the board’s March 5th Special Town meeting where they sought to provide an opportunity for the public to participate in addressing the options for budgetary reductions.

Members of the community who did show up at this meeting did bring with them courage and fortitude. The consensus seemed to be that they wanted to preserve SPICE and the Instrumental programs. It was suggested by some to keep the cuts furthest away from the students. There was some discussion about the pros and cons of the educational coordinators.

But to my recollection, there was no one at that meeting who demanded a zero % budget increase, despite that Mr. Hosmer and the BOF, who I guess seem to know more about the will of the people than the people do, insisted on.

Nice of Mr Hosmer and the BOF to be so presumptuous. Did they have a town meeting to discuss what the people wanted?? Did I miss the meeting where it was decided that we all wanted a zero% increase?? While perhaps the BOF is correct in this guess, I personally think that the decision should be made by the voters, not the BOF. Read the rest of this entry »

by Dean 

I would like to comment on Top Gun’s statement:

“As a parent I can only hope that the staff and the Woodstock Academy can show some courage and fortitude by making these sacrifices and keeping cuts as far away from the kids as possible.”

I guess I wonder when we, the citizen’s of Woodstock, will start to show some courage and fortitude. Year after year, we decide to fund the schools at the bottom of that state. We choose our personal pocketbooks over education. Why would you expect that a teacher that lives outside of this Town to sacrifice their pocketbook for our kids when we aren’t willing to make that same sacrifice? Note that this is rhetorical, it would not surprise me that many teachers would make that sacrifice, but the majority of voters in this town would not.

This school system goes through a crisis every 3 or 4 years. Teachers positions are cut, programs are lost. Top Gun, are you asking that teachers forego their raises each of those years? Note that this happens even when the economy is flying along.

A fact is that the schools are funded in the bottom of the state. No matter what CPS/Powers/Shultze say, it takes money to run a school and our schools will not have the same programs as other schools in this state. Now we are at bare bones, money needs to be cut and we are stuck cutting important things like instrumental and Spice.

Another fact is that we have the lowest taxes in Northeast CT, and given that Windham County is the poorest county in the state and we are the wealthiest town in our region, I would be willing to bet that our taxes are near the bottom in the state. Somehow, every other town can generate taxes to support their schools, we choose not to. Read the rest of this entry »

Hunter Ridge has moved from Rhode Island to establish a 48+ acre equestrian center on Lyon Hill Road in Woodstock. The stable began accepting boarders on November 1st, 2008.

The property on Lyon Hill Road is owned by Sue Melville and family and has been leased to the Brayman Family and Hunter Ridge of Rhode Island. The Braymans have already moved in 14 ponies. Right now they don’t have a CT phone # hooked up, but they will soon.

This new Hunter Ridge equestrian center (shown below) is located just north of where Lyon Hill Road meets Route 197 on the west side of the road.
Hunter Ridge offers 33 stalls, an indoor Morton arena, two outdoor rings, 4 extra large pastures, 5 individual turnout paddocks, a vet clinic, tack room with individual lockers, farrier’s station, horse laundry, wash racks, large upstairs observation area, show offices, grain room, men’ s and women’ s locker rooms with showers, and much more! Read the rest of this entry »

Woodstock’s proposed Town Operating Budget for 2009-2010 is $5.6 million, the same as last year. In addition there is a $10.9 million capital improvement budget.

To achieve a zero increase in the operating budget, the Selectmen had to remove $225,190 from an earlier draft of this budget which would have increased spending for the coming year by 4%. The BOE plans to conduct a similar revision of their budget for next year this coming week for submission to the Board of Finance at their meeting on March 31st.

What was cut:

Homeland security – $10,000
Open Space land acquisition – $100,000
Highway Department – $5,900
Leasing of a dumptruck – $71,500
Recreation – unknown amount
Tax Assessment Office – unknown amount
Finance Office – unknown amount
Libraries – unknown amount

In addition, the three Selectmen and heads of offices in the Town Hall will not receive a raise in July. This reverses (but not completely) the excessive 9-10% raises handed out by Ms. Wholean in July of 2007. To put this another way, these leaders received their raises for this year in July of 2007.

In early September 2007, Ms. Wholean stated on WINY that she gave herself a 9% raise ‘so that there would be money in the budget for a Town administrator’ .

Governor Rell has proposed a reduction in funding of the Community Investment Act that contributes to farmland preservation. Rell said she is not considering eliminating the sales and fuel tax exemption for farmers.

Farmers are having to sell some of their cows to keep their dairy farms a float.

From the Connecticut Farm Bureau:

$1.90 – The cost to produce a gallon of milk in Connecticut.

$1 - What farmers earn on a gallon of milk in Connecticut.

50 Percent – The decrease in milk profits (revenues?) for dairy farmers in Connecticut in the last year.

$1 Billion – The amount the dairy industry contributes to Connecticut’s economy.

4,000 – The number of jobs created by the dairy industry.

12 – The number of dairy farms that closed in 2008, leaving more than 150 in Connecticut.

Data is from the Norwich Bull.

AIG is an insurance company. They held policies for many banks and financial institutions, insuring them against losses. What I don’t understand is why we aren’t talking about the banks knowingly making bad loans then getting bailed out as the result of having an insurance policy against bad loans! Talk about gaming the system! Make loans to people you know won’t or can’t make good on and then get insurance monies for the losses that you intentionally incurred.

We are bailing out people who intentionally created losses knowing that it didn’t matter because there was an insurance policy that would keep them from being held accountable or their stockholders from losing any money. The problem arose because nobody was taking into account that the approach would work dependably as long as not too many people took advantage of the system and NOBODY wanted to be the one to say ENOUGH.

Home sales rose 5.1% in February compared to January 2009, the biggest jump since 2003. Also the median rose from $164,800 in January to $165,400 in February. See USAToday.

The Dow Jones over the last year and over the last 5 days.

S&P 500 over the last year and over the last 5 days.