Majority in Standing Room Only Crowd Call for Budget Cuts
(Note: This February 11th meeting was a “School Budget Public Hearing” where the Budget Committee presented its majority 4-3 voted proposed 2009-10 school budget to the public for their questions, comments and opinion…)
The Bow Citizen’s Coalition is please to reports the huge turn out at last night’s budget hearing. There were several important factors that came from this meeting that will not be reported anywhere else. First thing to be covered in this report is, who came to the meeting. The overwhelming majority at the meeting voiced their displeasure and lack of support for the budget because of its excesses.
It is also important to note that approximately 25 % of those attendees were school employees and the relatives of these employees. This is important to note because this special interest group will be out in force at the school district meeting as well. Lastly there were a small group of vocal people who think the budget wasn’t big enough and that we need to spend more. Knowing that there are people who are willing to raise your taxes even more, should be a wake up call and motivation those who are over taxed to go to the School District Meeting on March 13, 2009 @7:00 PM at Bow High School.
Another interesting development at the meeting was the telling confession of Business Administrator Duane Ford who admitted that even he had made the mistake of leaving off the food service appropriation from the budget as well. We all recall the food service omission was a big brouhaha at last years meeting where the “they are going to starve the children” was a rallying cry for a higher budget. A second startling admission by Ford was, that regardless of the budget figures food service will be in the budget and can’t be omitted. This brings up the question; why didn’t Ford bring up this point at last year’s meeting? Ford constantly interjects with information when it helps the cause to pass a spending article. Why wouldn’t he interject here. I think we all know that question and that is, if he had brought it up he may have been looking for a new job.
Kudos also have to be given to how informed the voters were. Even though Budget Chair George Lagos tried to sell the falsehood that the budget was actually a reduction voters weren’t buying that. The voters noted that the budget was actually an increase because of the huge overestimate on health insurance cost in last year’s budget. Also noted by the voters was the fact that even though there was a significant reduction in enrollment in the elementary school there were no cuts there. The school board found cost savings at the middle school were class room sizes are in the low twenties but decided to burden the taxpayer with low class room sizes in grades K-2. The inequity in their reasoning is mindboggling.
There were so many other happenings at this meeting and we invite those who went to the hearing to put their 2 cents worth in our comments section.
Reader reaction to Bow School Budget
Tuesday, February 17th, 2009Dear Messrs. George Lagos, Dan DeVasto, Rick Hiland, Peter Cheney and Jack Crisp; and, Mesdames Kally Abrams, Deb McCann and Cindy Martin:
Your endorsement of the Bow School District’s proposed 2009 – 2010 budget is cause for enormous concern. Responsibility for budgetary control and restraint, in the service of the best interests of all citizens, lies squarely in your hands. Continued passage of chronically excessive school budgets is destroying our town. In the midst of the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, the soundness of our elected leaders’ current fiscal policies and decisions cannot help but be called into question; Bow’s future is being sacrificed for partisan interests.
Bow’s wealth has been tied excessively to real estate for far too long. The party is over. The real estate market has collapsed. Development has vaporized. Trillions of dollars of wealth have vanished. Our citizens’ retirement, education and other savings have been ravaged. The stock market collapse is driving both small businesses and major corporations out of business at a mind-boggling rate. Millions of blue collar and white collar jobs have been lost and will continue to be lost. Many of the still employed are seeing their wages cut. Bow’s residents are not immune.
The real estate & schools gold rush has ended. The town population growth has flattened and the total school population has declined steadily for the last several years. The elderly continue to be driven out by ever-higher taxes. Most other residents flee once the nests are empty. These trends are projected to continue. The parasite is consuming the host organism.
The school district consistently takes a share of 60% or more of total property tax revenues. The 20% left over for the town (after state and county taxes) is not sufficient to meet our other basic needs. Town services and infrastructure are deteriorating. Our transfer station has closed, street lights have been extinguished and crucial maintenance and capital equipment replacements are routinely deferred. Now, a credible risk of permanent closure of Merrimack Station, our only other significant source of tax revenue, poses the possibility of a catastrophic town bankruptcy.
Meanwhile, the Planning Board advocates spending $12 million for sewer and water line construction along Route 3A to attract business at a time when the economy is shrinking, not growing,. As a 20 year resident, I just don’t recall many, if any, truly serious overtures by any major business enterprise to an extent that would provide meaningful residential tax relief. The truth may be that Bow is just not a very attractive location for major commercial development, especially now and for the foreseeable future, water and sewer lines notwithstanding. All the time, effort and money expended to this end over the years may well have been in vain.
Yet, the best you and the School Board can do is to trim last year’s record budget by a measly one-half of one percent. These desperate times call for real leadership and serious action on your part. A 10% cut is completely justified although 5% reductions annually for several years would likely prove more feasible. This would demonstrate a sincere effort to protect all taxpayers’ interests and save our town.
The Bow schools are public schools, not private academies or genius factories. BHS graduate results remain remarkably consistent over the years. Perhaps 10 – 15% will attend so-called top flight colleges and universities. 5-10% either will not continue with post-secondary education, will enlist in the military, will fail to graduate with their class on time, or will drop out. The remaining 75-85%, the majority, will attend state universities or colleges, community colleges, and other post-secondary training, primarily in New Hampshire or elsewhere in the region.
I am neither an enemy of education nor an advocate of a Spartan school system. However, the fundamental requirements for excellent education have not changed since the Stone Age. I have undertaken literally thousands of hours of education and training in my lifetime, including elementary, secondary, undergraduate, graduate, military and commercial/professional. The elegance of the physical plant or a huge menu of scholastic gadgets, extracurricular activities and ancillary programs – or the lack thereof – never played any significant role in my academic or career successes. If honest, the majority of you, our other elected leaders, and our citizens shared similar experiences and know this to be true.
The School Board’s routine response to proposed budget cuts consists of threats and intimidation: regardless of the proposal, popular programs may have to be eliminated and, of course, “grades might suffer”. The Budget Committee should know better. Our school system burgeons with many expensive “extras” that could be eliminated at a great cost savings with negligible impact on academic quality. Every “extra”, of course, has at least one proponent to complain if its elimination is proposed. It is primarily a matter of ego, not necessity, and real leadership on your part is required to stand up for what is right.
My candidates for elimination begin with Intercession which, despite all the promise and spin, amounts to an enormous waste of time and money. Students of affluent families get another vacation opportunity sandwiched between the February and April breaks. Every year we pay BHS teachers full salaries to chaperone trips of varying length away from school: this year’s champion is a 12 day trip to China for students who can cough up $3,500. Students of less affluent families are stuck with in-school activities that rarely live up to their billing and spend a lot of time just “hanging-out”. Every so often a teacher publicly thanks the taxpayers for paying him/her to play games instead of teaching. Eliminating Intercession will ruin no child’s future.
I also propose considering a host of elective courses for elimination such as Jewelry Making, Interior Design, Film Critique, Child Psychology, TV Broadcasting, World Religions, Introduction to World Drumming, and others. I’m sure all are fascinating to some degree but can hardly be considered essential academic components.
Further, the ways we choose to provide a magnitude of special needs education and services warrants close scrutiny. It strains credulity to believe we must transport a single student to and from Nashua to participate in a summer program as the only means to comply with regulations. Dr. Cascadden, I believe, invoked meeting “the spirit of the law” in a discussion of the cost of a special needs function. History clearly demonstrates the School Board has a most generous and costly “spirit” when it comes to interpreting needs and requirements. Where we would be now if we’d built that additional $6-7 million school the Board lobbied so strongly for 10 years ago? I suspect the cost of much of this special education generosity could be reduced while still meeting all state requirements amply.
In conclusion, at this critical time in our history, it is the Budget Committee’s duty to exert some semblance of leadership and control to save our town from the ruination posed by the School Board’s recklessness. No one else is doing the job. Years of protest have fallen on deaf ears. It is obvious that our elected leaders are immune to the real-world economic melt-down that imperils most of our citizens and are indifferent to the consequences their pet projects pose for the rest of us. Is anyone in charge of the asylum? I strongly encourage the Budget Committee to go on record as a voice of rationality and fairness, oppose the proposed budget, and recommend the School Board find meaningful ways to reduce spending. If educational quality falls as a result, we need a new School Board.
Thank you,
S. Scott Lucas
12 Risingwood Drive
Bow, NH
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