2014-2015 Budget - A Comedy of Errors

Please vote NO at the upcoming budget referendum on 05/13/14 to both the BOE Budget and the Municipal Budget. The current budgets being sent to referendum will result in a tax increase of nearly a full Mil. This tax increase is too high and is not what Oxford taxpayers voted for this past November. With the voters help, we can and we will do better. The Town side is easy. Purchases of durable equipment with shelf-lives of up to 25 years, like a new pumper truck or a payloader, should be financed for five years at current very low interest rates. The BOE budget is trickier. Mostly due to union contract increases and increases in medical insurance benefits, the BOE budget needs to increase appx $700,000., or 2.6%, just to remain flat. In other words, a $700,000 increase equals zero.  This percentage increase would be in line with previous annual budget increases passed by the voters over the past two years and would be fiscally responsible and prudent. The $1,000,000 increase recently passed by the BOF is just too much for taxpayers to absorb in the absence of grand list revenue growth. The majority of  the BOE budget increase comes from the funding of Full Day Kindergarten (FDK) in the 2014-2015 budget. In January, the FDK Ad Hoc Committee presented a FDK implementation proposal to the BOE at an annual recurring cost of $533,000. This was down from the original cost estimate in excess of $850,000 per year. At a BOE Finance Committee meeting on 02/13/2014, Superintendent Tim Connellan told us that FDK could not be implemented for a penny less than the proposed $533,000. He was asked this question directly, twice, by BOE member Dave Yish. Five days later, on 02/18/2014, at a full BOE meeting, Mr Connellan surprised us all by cutting the proposed cost of FDK in half, without consulting with anyone on the BOE first. That night, the BOE removed all funding for FDK, no longer trusting the numbers. Then, somehow, the BOE had our personal emails and cell numbers leaked to the public. We each received about a hundred complaints from zealous FDK parents who, almost without exception, have kids entering K next year. And so, at the next BOE meeting on 02/25/2014, The BOE changed its position and restored nearly $300,000 for FDK. While all nine members of the BOE support FDK, there are disagreements on how we should pay for this major, new spending initiative. Some BOE members want FDK at any price, right now. Some believe it is up to the BOF to determine how programs are paid for, still others support an implementation protocol developed by Dave Yish that ties FDK funding to growth in the Town's Grand List, so the impact of FDK on the taxpayer would be minimal. I endorse this common-sense approach. All of the spending programs that Oxford needs will eventually be paid for by increases in the grand list through economic development, not tax increases. We should not spend money we don't have and send the tab to the struggling taxpayers of Oxford. These budget questions are now in the hands of the voters. At the budget referendum on 05/13/2014, please join us and vote NO! We can then go back to the drawing board and start over, balancing the needs of the school district and the taxpayers together.

Gerard Carbonaro