Community Corner

City Council Approves 2011-2012 Budget

Property taxes will increase slightly; schools will obtain some requested funding under plan.

It was the last act in a very long play.

After two months of meetings, public hearings and negotiations, the City Council approved a final 2011-2012 budget package for the city Monday night. The adopted budget will raise property taxes in the city by 1 percent and flat-fund the schools but provide them with some financial help.

The adopted tax increase is less than the 1.6 percent that City Manager Lawrence Kendzior proposed in early March, when he first released his version of the budget to the council.

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The 1 percent tax hike means that the owner of a $202,000 home in Meriden’s outer district will pay $42 more in the taxes for the next fiscal year. If located in the inner district – the cost to that homeowner would be $30 more than last year, City Councilor George McGoldrick said.

Nearly every city department came in under its previous year’s budget request, McGoldrick said. He informed a packed council chamber that barring the Board of Education, city departments came in together at about $800,000 under the previous year’s budget.

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School funding, an issue that catalyzed the city’s parents, teachers and non-profit groups this spring, will technically remain flat for the second year in a row. But after two months of negotiations, the council added in four creative provisions to help the school district cover its own budget increases.

These are:

1.     Surplus carryover  - The board will be allowed to use surplus funds it has left over in its budget this year to prepay certain yet-to-be-determined costs for next year.

2.     Unemployment payments – Though the city itself has traditionally funded the Board of Education’s unemployment payments, Kendzior shifted these to the Board of Education in his preliminary 2011-2012 budget this March.  The budget that was approved Monday night put the burden of the district’s unemployment payments – budgeted at $300,000 – back on the city.

3.     Health benefit savings – The city reduced the amount the department pays for its own health benefits by $250,000, and is allowing the board to use those funds in other places they see fit.

4.     Safety net for special education tuition – The city intends to approve a resolution that would put $250,000 in undesignated reserves into designated reserves for “special education tuition” – to be used only if the board exhausts its already budgeted funds for special education outplacements and does not have any other dollars in its budget for funding these.

 “It is truly the most volatile and difficult to predict in the line items,” said city councilor Dante Bartolomeo about the outplacement tuition. She said the fund would “be there as a safety net if they need it.”

Bartolomeo was the council’s liaison to the school board, and worked for two months to get both entities closer to budget agreement. The two started out with a $2.7 million gap between them.

The district will still have to shore up another $230,000, either through savings this year or cuts next year.

“This doesn’t necessarily make them whole,” Bartolomeo said at the meeting, adding that the council strongly recommended those funds not come from teacher layoffs or programmatic cuts. The district already intends to eliminate 26 staff positions this year.  

City Councilor Walter Shamock of the We the People Party was the only "no" vote on the budget for the night. Shamock said he was voting against the budget because he didn't see any efforts from Meriden teachers to help the Board of Education's financial dire straits by giving up their contractual raises, or making other concessions, like those in other towns have done.

Board of Education members were cautiously pleased about the result.

“We still have a $230,000 gap, but we’re very pleased with the collaborative effort that was made here between the city and the board," said Board President Mark Hughes, who has served on the body since 2003. "I don’t think on all my years on the board I’ve seen such hard work – between both bodies in terms of trying to come up with a mutual agreement.”


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