Branford Finance Board OKs $94M Budget

A proposed $95 million town and education budget for 2011-12, up 4.4 percent in spending over last year, was rolled back last night to $94.04 million.

The Board of Finance (BOF) cut nearly $1 million from the proposed town and Board of Education budgets, but still left taxpayers with a 3.32 percent hike. 

The budget process still has a way to go before reaching final numbers. The budget is ultimately determined by the Representative Town Meeting (RTM), which may lower the budget by changing line items, but it cannot change the BOF’s expenditures. The BOF will now send the budget to various RTM committees. The final RTM vote comes at its May meeting. Then the budget returns to the BOF where a final mill rate is determined. 
 

Much can happen from March to May. On the state level, Jim Finch, the town’s chief finance officer, said in an interview that the current Branford budget does not include additional revenue streams identified in the governor’s budget.

“It is our hope that the state aid picture will become clearer in May when the BOF adopts the final mill rate,” he said.

If everything stays the same, the current budget would require a tax increase of 0.87 percent mills, or a 3.69 percent hike in the tax bill, if the RTM approved it as is, an unlikely scenario. 

At hearings held over three days last week, all town department heads and school officials presented proposed budgets totaling $95 million for town and school expenses and capital items. The BOE came in at $49.4 million, the highest in its history. But that number was lowered to $49.17 million by the BOF. 

Joseph Mooney, the BOF chair, opened the meeting at Canoe Brook Senior Center by saying the six-member board had deliberated ​“separately and among ourselves” to come up with cuts, each one of which he read aloud to an audience of about 30, including members of the BOE. He said the board was very aware of the economic climate for taxpayers and sought to pare down while still coming up ​“with a fair budget.” 

But in the end the BOF lopped off only $1 million of a proposed $4 million increase, presenting taxpayers with a 3.32 percent hike over this year’s budget.

In Branford, property taxes pay for roughly 96 percent of the public school budget. The school budget this year surpasses the town’s overall budget. State funding for education is expected to be flat again this year, coming in at $1.75 million annually for Branford’s public school system. The school system pays roughly $14,700 per student. At the same time, past history has shown that unexpected retirements, lower enrollment and any number of other factors might change and lower the board’s budget by May. 
 
At the meeting First Selectman Unk DaRos praised Finch and all the department heads and commissions for their hard work: ​“None of these budgets are easy. You have delivered a good, sound, responsible budget that addresses the needs of community as well as enabling it to plan for the future.

“You know we are fortunate to be financially strong. Our town enjoys the highest rating possible,” he said of the triple A bond rating the town continues to hold. ​“The state’s OPM [Office of Policy and Management] says our expected tax rate is well below average. The federal government is making substantial investments in our town. So is the state. Private investors are also investing in Branford. You actually have much to be proud of. So I am confident that the budget you just recommended to the RTM is consistent with our record for careful management.” 

Last Friday, Mooney and Charles Shelton, Jr., the Republican BOF member with the longest tenure on the board, met with DaRos and Finch at Town Hall to deliver the BOF’s decisions. Over the years, there has been consensus among the six-members, three Democrats and three Republicans, and that appeared to be the case Friday as the cuts were unveiled, sources said. The BOF has long been viewed as an apolitical board. 

But the newest member of the board, Jennifer Aniskovich, a Republican, did not join her Republican colleagues in voting for the town’s operating budget and she explained why at the meeting. She began by saying she was ​“happily surprised at the effort and work and energy” that went into the board’s budget process but at the same time was ​“a little disappointed by the results.”

“I want to explain my votes tonight. I think it is hard in this current economic climate,” she said, adding that she thought more should have been pared back on the town’s operating budget side. She said she was aware that this board had voted unanimously over the years but she wanted it known that she was not inclined to do so at this time. She did not put the Board of Education in the same category, she said.

However, Shelton and Kenneth Kaminsky, the other Republican member, did not join her as she voted nay every time as Mooney read aloud each town department’s final numbers. Whether the department received an increase, a decrease or no change at all, she voted ​“Nay.” That included fire and police budgets. She also voted against the town’s contingency fund for which $572,000 had been approved by the BOF.

In a subsequent interview she said the BOF started off with a $4 million increase overall. ​“We brought it down by a million by cutting from the operating budget and the capital budget of the Board of Ed and the capital budget of the town but we actually added money to the operating budget of the town. In my opinion, we could have done a lot more to cut back on the town’s operating budget.” She said she was concerned about taxpayers on limited budgets and facing financial stress.

Asked if hers was a protest vote, she said no. ​“We all worked very hard to present our own opinions and I just wanted to make sure that my opinion on that small portion of the budget was clear.” 

The Board of Education, which came in with a $49.4 million budget, its highest in history, was reduced by about $500,000 in operating and capital costs. How it will make up the difference remains to be seen.

Faced with an obligatory teacher’s salary hike totaling $1 million in the last year of its teacher’s contract, beginning this July, the board has several options. It can seek to re-open negotiations on the last year of the contract, which it seems reluctant to do or it can ​“compress” services” even more than first outlined by Schools Superintendent Hamlet Hernandez last week.

By compressing services he meant, among other things, that class size might be increased by one pupil, say from 20 to 21, a number that does not reach 25, the maximum class size number under the contract in most instances. 

The teachers’ controversial contract in its third and upcoming final year totals $23.6 million. It began in July 1, 2009 and adds $1 million each year until 2012. A teacher with a Bachelor and Masters Degree at the 14th and final contract step in 2012 will earn $82,050. Teachers also get paid extra funds for supervising extra-curricular activities. 

According to the Connection Association of Boards of Education, (CABE) Branford’s teachers’ contract, agreed to on October 3, 2008, is the 11th highest in the state for that year. In the final year of the contract coming up, teachers in Branford will received a 4.8 percent hike.

The BOF cannot ask or force the BOE to reopen negotiations or to seek concessions. It is up to the Board of Education to arrive at the figure set by the BOF. 

Hernandez told the BOF last Thursday that he wanted to compress services for schools without re-opening talks in what will soon be the last year of the contract. His reasoning was that the union would ask for give-backs in any case and since a new contract was imminent, he would seek a leaner, tougher contract in the next round of negotiations. 

In the past, the union leadership has said it would consider give backs or concessions in one form or another but that suggestion has never taken hold, even when school administrators took cuts in their own salaries, making an effort to lead the way. 

The increases on the town side and the school side are virtually all driven by rising mandated labor cost rate increases. For example, Finch said in an interview that in 2003, the state of Connecticut required towns to provide a 2.75 percent contribution toward public employee pensions for all areas except police. In 2011 this number has increased to 11.56 percent of a town’s contribution. 

In an interview last week, DaRos said of the teacher’s contract: ​“I respect the bargaining units. I do. But also I would hope that they would respect the position we are in and maybe give us some help.”

That may or may not happen. He has no control over the BOE. Of the overall budget adopted last night DaRos told the Eagle afterwards: ​“We can make that work. I don’t know about the Board of Ed. We will talk to the superintendent. But the rest of it we can make work. We can’t cut our town departments any more than they are. We have to deliver these services to the people.” 

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