Last night the BOE held a meeting. Today’s Hour reveals the highlight of that meeting. We could read through that, and we will, but then there’s a musical tribute that Dr. Sal Corda is saying that we maybe should be paying attention to:
Ahem, the Hour reports:
On Monday night, Corda laid out to the school board the 2008-09 operating budget adoption schedule. With the board’s permission, he intends to open the Dec. 18 board meeting at 6:45 p.m. — an hour early — to allow public input on the budget “whether it is relevant to process, ideas, etc.”
“Our intent is to get the proposed budget to you on (Dec.) 21st,” Corda told board members.
Corda has recommended that the school board host the first of potentially three budget presentations meetings on Jan. 2, at which time he will explain the spending plan. The second presentation would take place Jan. 3. A third presentation, if necessary, would be held Jan. 7, Corda said.Members of the Common Council, and the Board of Estimate and Taxation, which will set the bottom line for city and school spending for the fiscal year starting next July, will be invited to attend.
“As I did last year, I will invite the Common Council and members of the Board of Estimate, the finance director to the meetings to hear the presentations,” Corda told school board members.
“Our intent is to present the budget to you, in detail, as well as to respond to any questions that you may have,” Corda said. “And of course, (we would incorporate) any recommendations that you would make, that we would need to modify the proposed budget for you, so that it comes before you, for a vote, on Tuesday, Jan. 8.”
Corda said the budget, as adopted by the school board, would go to Thomas S. Hamilton, the city’s finance director, the following day.
Fred Wilms, Board of Estimate chairman, said he and other board members look forward to attending Corda’s budget presentation meetings in January. Wilms declined to comment on what bottom line he would like to see on the Board of Education’s 2008-09 operating budget.
“We really have to wait to see (Corda’s) numbers, and study those carefully, before we can really make any comments,” Wilms said. “The average spending increase for the Board of Education over the past 10 years has been in the 4 percent to 5 percent range. That seems to be the normal. The Board of Education should be mindful that this is what they’ve received, on average, the last 10 years.”
Corda said what!? “he intends to open the Dec. 18 board meeting at 6:45 p.m. — an hour early — to allow public input on the budget “whether it is relevant to process, ideas, etc.”" Oh my. Talk about starting out the budget process on a high handed note. The behind the scenes is not that much better.
Bruce Kimmel has lit the fire under the meetings of the BOE finance committee. That is a good thing. A very good thing. This means that the BOE will have the opportunity to review and discuss the budget line items, hopefully in more detail, before the full BOE, public, BET and council get to see it. Kinda makes sense to do it that way. Sort of like, oh, 100% of the rest of the democratic world. So far so good. But then there’s the Executive committee of the BOE.
Last summer the BOE and Corda was informed that per FOI compliance, such meetings needed to noticed and anyone could attend. Naturally, when then chair Jodi Bishop-Pullan was informed of this pesky open government requirement, she unilaterally announced that the committee was dissolved. Note that there’s no record of all of this because the meeting and the existence of this committee was in total non compliance.
A funny thing happened on the way to this budget forum, because lo and behold, there’s a new executive committee meeting scheduled for next week. Who is on it? Will it comply with FOI? Did Susan Hamilton (current BOE chair) even know about this? So stay tuned for the next episode of FOI and you, brought to you by the Norwalk BOE, because testing FOI laws is an educational experiment.
source: The Hour: City, school board await Corda’s budget, By ROBERT KOCH, December 5, 2007
