Present: First Selectman Woody Bliss; Selectman W. Glenn Major; Town Administrator Tom Landry; Administrative Assistant Judy DeVito; Residents and member of the press.

 

 

Mr. Bliss called the meeting to order at 7:31pm.

 

Discussion/decision regarding transmitting the Board of Education Budget to the Board of Finance. Mr. Bliss said Mr. Miller was unable to attend the meeting but read an email that he had sent.

 

“I am sorry that I am unable to attend this evening's meeting either in person or by phone.   I had made other commitments that simply could not be changed.   But the issue of the school budget is a crucial one for the Town of Weston, so I wanted to provide my summary views on the subject in writing.   Specifically, I would like to address two issues - (1) the long term population projections, and (2) the proposed '07-'08 budget.

As to long term population projections, the enrollment projection up to 2011-12 now show a constant and steady decline in the school population, from a current enrollment of 2,575 to a future enrollment of only 2,302.   I believe it is in the best interest of the Town of Weston to immediately begin to plan budgets to account for this population change.   Thus, I would like for the BOE to prepare an updated 10 year budget estimate based on the new projected school enrollment.

I would now like to address the second and pressing issue of the proposed BOE
budget for the year 2007-08.   The proposed budget is $42,240,058 which is based on a projected school population of 2,527.   The proposed budget constitutes a 5.46% increase over the current budget of $40,051,557 notwithstanding the fact that the projected school population for 2007-08, 2527, is 48 students or 1.8% LESS than the current school population.   Moreover, last year the BOE had projected a budget for the year 2007-08 in the amount of $41,979.370 based on an enrollment of 2,542.
I do not believe given the decrease in the school population for 2007-08 from what had been assumed in that earlier projection, we should now have an increase in the budget.   In my judgment, the proposed budget can and should be reduced by
$260,688 so that it is precisely the figure that the BOE had projected last year as the 2007-08 costs.  

I am confident that whatever choices the BOE were to make to achieve this reduction
would be prudent.   The key is that the budget be reigned in so that it remains appropriate for the size of our community.   Thank you.”

 

Mr. Major thanked the Board of Education for the information that they provided. He said although the report for required versus choice is helpful unfortunately without any dollar numbers associated with it, it is not meaningful. He thought we would be able to look at the hard costs that were associated with the school year going forward. He could not tell how much of the increase is being driven by what we have to have regardless of anything else and how much of it is what we want to have. He asked with all things being equal what is it going to go up. Then he can start looking at what the discretionary type expenses that we have and try to weight those on expenses.

 

Mr. Major felt that he could not get his arms around the concept of what is needed for the bus system. He felt it was inappropriate to make any decisions until they did the parent survey. He felt that they would find an inordinate number of parents that do not care what the bus system is and were going to drive there child back and forth to school.

 

The other question is do you want convenience or shorter routes. He said if the parents want the convenience of walking out to the end of their driveway and the kids get on the bus we are going to have long bus routes.

 

Dr. Keating said the reason for bringing on an electronic routing system is not to make a decision whether or not we have convenience or have people wait in group stops. The purpose of the study is to have a data base that performs decisions about how we route. Right now it is all done manually with a pen system and they and their consultants have looked at the buses and they monitored the rider ship of the vehicles that they have they came to a conclusion that there are inefficiencies in their system. The manual system in place is not a user friendly tool to assist them in making the fleet more efficient.

 

Once the routing schematic is developed for Weston, it is not a full time job to maintain that and keep that running. For each bus that you can save it is close to $50,000 in year one, year two, etc. She said in her view it is a wise thing to do in terms of managing effectively and being good stewards of the tax payers dollars.

 

Mr. Major said if he could do a one year appropriation of $50,000, and he knew at the end of the year it went away, he might be a little more comfortable. His fear is that this position gets created and then all of a sudden, we have another administrative position which does not go away in a year, and we have just added another piece. He has never seen an administrative position cut.

 

Dr. Keating said at some point when the opportunity through attrition presents itself in the future, we have functions that can be consolidated so the process will happen naturally through that mechanism. Mr. Major asked if we could hire this person as a consultant rather than as an employee so we do not get into benefits.

 

Dr. Pierson said that there was no intent to create positions. The intent is to develop systems of greater accountability that will provide cost savings over time. She said parental convenience is not what drives the creation of bus routes in any organization. The goal is to get a much better handle on a transportation system that we are required by law to offer. Dr. Pierson said they are not trying to add administrative staff this would be a clerical person. She said that she had no expectation that they need a transportation director in this district.   

 

Mr. Major said maybe we could take this piece out of the budget and treat it as a separate entity. They could come back with some hard numbers and come back for a supplemental appropriation for that particular project as opposed to it being part of the Board of Education Budget so that it can be ear marked for this.

 

Mrs. Uzenoff said she had the opposite reaction. In order to put the process into play you have to make the initial pay and then you get the results of your investigations and you bring it back. She said having the purveyor of the service do the scheduling, there is no cross checks, there is no balance so to separate the two makes so much more sense to her.

 

Mr. Major said one of the reasons that he is comfortable with a supplemental is that it then is not part of this years budget, it does not become part of next years budget so when you look at next years increase over this years budget there is not this piece that gets increased over time. It is really done as a separate piece and is a one shot expense.

 

Dr. Pierson said that is something the Board needs to consider.

 

Mr. Major said he is concerned that he is looking at a budget that is increasing at a greater rate than what even last year the Board of Education anticipated the budget was going to grow at. It is servicing a school population that is smaller than what the Board of Education anticipated the school population to be. The two numbers are going in different directions. He was disheartened to hear that it did not appear to be that there was any thought of a plan to deal with the declining enrollment in relation to the increasing cost. We are in for a train wreck, if we are going in these directions.

 

Dr. Pierson said a specific plan that is laid out over a number of years has not been developed at this point. She believes that it is extremely important for the various elected public officials as well as the appropriate staff to sit down and have a conversation about the future.

 

Mr. Bliss asked about historical data regarding enrollment. He wanted to know since, currently, we are at full projected enrollment and it was only February, is that what happens historically. Mr. Anderson said they looked closely over the last three years and on average we gain about twenty one students over the summer. Dr. Pierson said they have never had fewer than have been projected. Mrs. Genovese said at the end of their registration period last year which was March 6, they had 184 kindergarten students registered. The next years projection was 193, by October 1, they had 210 kindergartens.

 

Mr. Bliss said they really need a plan so that they have an idea of where they are going. Ellen Uzenoff said they had talked about long range planning but that 10 years out was not a viable number and they have all come to an agreement that when they did it would be three to five years. Mr. Bliss said that that misses the point of long range planning. The point of long range planning is to do adjustments as things go along. He said we are facing a serious issue of declining enrollments.

 

Mr. Bliss said he is also concerned with GASB 45. Right now the Town has about a $1.7 million dollar existing unfunded post retirement set of obligation. The Board of Education has a 10.4 million dollar obligation. He said there is more and more pressure to bring it into the public sector. If you take the 10.4 million dollar obligation and if you had to provide for it in 10 years that is 1 million dollars a year.

 

Mr. Bliss said the dollar increase per pupil in this budget is the biggest in the history of the Town. He is still trying to get his hands around why that is.  The increases have been operating in the 4% to 6% range with the exception of 2005-2006 where we had the big spike because of opening the new school facilities. As we look past 2007 with a declining student enrollment the per-pupil increases are in to 6% to 8% range. The dollar increase in per pupil cost is higher this year than it was two years ago.

 

Mr. Bliss said the system that Dr. Keating has designed in the budget is terrific and he would call it an accountability system but from a fiscal analysis form a planning standpoint we need to be slicing the pie in some different ways. He would like to get the per pupil cost by school and even maybe by program so we know what it cost to do English, Math, Science, etc.

 

Mr. Bliss said if we said 4.8% was an appropriate growth this budget would be 1 million dollars less than what it is. Right now in this budget the per-pupil growth is 7.6% which is about $1,126 per student per year.

 

Mr. Bliss said his concern is the last survey indicate that 38% of the families in Town had kids in school which is one of the highest percentages in the State of Connecticut. There are the folks in town who are concerned about their taxes. We need to keep the empty nesters in town.  Since we have no industrial base, it is the home owners that pay that burden.

 

Mr. Bliss said in looking at the Ridgefield Budget there is a page that has cost per student which is outstanding. He hopes next year we can have something like that. Dr. Keating said unfortunately she did not have the time to research that for this budget.

 

Mr. Major said he could not rationalize this large of an increase on a declining enrollment. Dr. Pierson said on page 92 the program improvements are spelled out. Mr. Bliss urged the Board of Education to do a three or five year plan.

 

Mr. Major made a motion that we forward to the Board of Finance a Board of Education Budget of $41,980,058. Mr. Bliss seconded and the motion passed Mr. Bliss, Mr. Major yes. Mr. Miller absent.

 

Discussion/decision regarding budget request from Southwest CT EMS Council, Inc; of $1,300. Mr. Major said we were not going to make a change to that. Mr. Major said the answer to the question was a surprise to Mr. Dadik. It is not an assessment but any adjustment we would have made would have been so inconsequential to the line item that it does not warrant making a change; however, next year it will be done a very different way.

 

Adjournment- At 8:55pm Mr. Major made a motion to adjourn the meeting. Mr. Bliss seconded the motion passed.

 

Respectfully submitted

Judy M. DeVito

Administrative Assistant.

Approved 5/17/07