BOE meeting attendance
As reported by the WRAs Lauresha Xhihani:
A public hearing on the proposed $60 million school budget attracted only two members of the public on Tuesday night and was over in 38 minutes. More than 80 chairs were set up for the public hearing....
On the school budget... I'm continuing with my compilation. But it's taking some time. Hopefully this weekend I'll be able to provide one or two more (of the six) major categories. About the "six," as I've mentioned before, I believe the six categories are the areas that are determined by the BOE by state statute. Any of the lesser categories may be reallocated without a BOE vote.
Tim White
10 comments:
The reason for poor attendance might be that their meeting dates conflict with other town meetings. The upcoming meeting conflicts with the final P&Z decision on the north end. The other problem is that their meetings are all over town, you never know where there being held (Humiston School, High School, Highland School). Also I tried to watch a BOE meeting on TV and is it by accident or on purpose that their telecasts are so poor. They actually had a telecast with no voice. Can't they get students to film their meetings.
All of the reasons listed are true. One has to go to the first meeting to find where the others will be. The video is horrible, makes you wonder why. The other meetings affect your taxes down the road, the BOE's have an immediate impact. The message that will be interpreted by the BOE members is nobody cares and they can do whatever they please.
If you watched the January 16 Planning and Zoning meeting you might have thought it was disorganized. Strollo would ask if any of the commissioners had any questions and some of the commissioners responded, mostly Maye and Todisco with some important questions on traffic, sewage capacity,and runoff. One would think that the meeting would have been organized to discuss the pros and cons of the decision criteria as part of their deliberation, since it was a meeting to deliberate.
What we didn't know was that Marty Cobern had written a findings document and it was given to the commission members, basically this would serve as an approval document. So while the public was in the dark, the commission members were referring to Marty's Findings document when they asked questions.
Now that I can see the document that was leaked, I'm really upset that Marty took it upon himself to write the Commission Findings in the affirmative, as if all the commission members agreed. Not one said they didn't agree with the wording, they just asked some questions. If this was intended to be a document for discussion, why didn't the chairman read all 20 criteria one after the other and discuss each item in full? Instead he simply asked if they had questions? Most of the items on Marty's Findings document were not discussed, so does that mean that the commission members fully agreed with Marty's conclusions or were some intimidated to accept them? Read the document and you will see that it is written in an extremely biased manner, excluding any information that did not support the mall. This draft sure looks like it was written to be the APPROVAL.
Do you think this document is a good starting point for a deliberation?
To view Marty's Findings Document, click on the following link
Click here to view the APPROVAL.
The last stand is always with the Town Council. The BOE never cuts anything and never listens to anyone, so why should one attend. Unless the BOE starts takening some action whether they increase or decrease Dr. Florios budget request the public will stay away. Fixing the school buildings and purchasing state of the art equipment is something I support in this years budget but not in the BOE budget. It doesn't belong there.
It seems some are starting to question the BOE Medical Trust Fund expenditure. Florio says he needs to fund this 110 percent. My question is if we keep funding this to the tune of 110 or even 100 percent and the claims do not reach that amount what happens to the overage. Why doesn't it stay in there for next year. Someone pointed out that Florio uses this fund as he sees fit and it utilmately becomes Florio's "slushfund". If this is what happens the practice should stop. Any overage should be left in for next year so this does not have to be funded 100 or 110 percent on a yearly basis.
Did anyone notice that when Kathy Hellreich read the questions submitted to the BOARD members that it was the superintendent that answered all but one of them? The questions were FOR the Board members and it was disappointing that no Board members answered or made any comments on any of them.
No wonder the public doesn't attend because they never get the opinions of the Board - it's always only the Superintendent.
Did anyone mention the fact that when the Northend and the existing commercial zones are prolifergated with housing there will be hundreds more students? Remember the text change to the Town plan now allows residential in our existing commercial zones. Of course the developers would have to request a a zone change, but now that's so much easier.
Brace yourself Cheshire, redistricting and school construction will not be that far down the road.
Do you think P&Z opened a Pandora's Box? Remember Sean Strollo saying, well we can always change it back? The reply was "YES". That's a cruel joke.
Another reason for poor attendance is that there was no mention of any cuts to sports programs. You watch, if the TC reduces the BOE budget and if the Superintendent says he may have to cut a sports program or initiate sports fees, there will be lines out the door at town hall. It just goes to show you that sports are a bigger priority than academics to many parents and students.
Any overage in the the Medical Account is usually placed into the Medical Trust Fund Reserve. As an example if the 10% overage was budgeted at $500,000 and medical claims in total were equal to what was budgeted then the $500k would go into the reserve account. The medical account is funded on a 12 month equal basis; that is total projected medical costs divided by 12. That monthly amount goes into the account from which the medical claims are paid. A few years ago the monthly was scheduled to be about $450k. Starting March of that year the monthly deposit was reduced to about $350k because claims were lower than projected. March to June equals 4 months of $100k difference that was not put into the medical account but directed elsewhere. This is how money from the medical goes to other items. Once the money is deposited into the medical account it can only be used for medical expenses. If the money is never put in it can be directed for any use. By State law the education system is not allowed to have any money left over at the end of the fiscal year. If they had extra it would have be given back to the Town and cannot be held over for the next year. So instead of having extra money and hand back to the town, the extra money is spent on whatever. The Supt should, if he has extra money give it back.
Have you read Marty Cobern's Findings on the W/S Zone Match Change? If you haven't, you should as this is the basis of the P&Z'S final approval.
As many of you know Marty has supported the W/S project from the gitgo.
Remember his support for the residential part. It's very hard to understand why he wants the residential so badly. In the last phase, they said that the commission has complete control and if they don't want the residential it can be eliminated in the next phase. Well, that phase is now and we haven't heard anyone raise the question of eliminating the residential this phase and Marty says, in item q), that this addresses, " a type of residential property that is not in great supply in Cheshire". Look around, there is plenty of unsold housing in Cheshire.
Marty wants the housing, but most of Cheshire definitely doesn't want it. It's not Cheshire's needs that are to be filled, but that of local developers.
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