The Advocate’s Alexandra Fenwick does a nice job covering the operating budget, the whole article is worth a read, here, but I’d like to focus on these grafs:
Principal and interest on capital budget bonds are factored into the city’s operating budget as debt service payments, one of the “largest stressors” on the operating budget, at $27 million this year, compared to $11 million five years ago, Wilms said.
“The good news is the schools are being renovated, the bad news is, we’re now paying for it,” Wilms said.
Okay, okay, Opdhal is now yesterday’s news. So what has our enterprising BOE been up to? Well, there’s a skirmish of sorts between Corda and everyone except Jodi Bishop-Pullan and Susan Hamilton over whether the internal candidates applying for Lang’s and Opdahl’s positions will ever see the light of the BOE review. Corda naturally, wants executive privilege over who makes the final round of review. Normally I would agree with him, he’s the chief executive and its his executive team. But this is Corda, who essentially lost his executive privileges over how he handled the disaster that was Opdahl.
Tonight the ordinance committee will consider adopting some sort of path to getting the BOE to meet on a regular basis. This was the idea behind the movement last year, which resulted in … no meetings. Mostly due to Corda being unavailable. Alexandra Fenwick reports:
A Common Council committee tonight will consider whether to create a joint panel with the school board to improve communication.
Better cooperation is a perennial topic that tends to come up at the end of budget season.
Since its always good to check out what other school districts are doing, here’s a peek at Milford:
As budget season rages on and the proposed education budget faces a possible $2 million cut, administrators’ salaries are being targeted by education watchdogs.
The 2008-09 account designated for the salaries of Supt. of Harvey Polansky and Assistant Supt. for Teaching and Learning Michael Cummings is more than $67,000 larger than it was last year, a projected leap that caught budget watchdog Ed Tamas’ eye.
When the White Barn Theater came on the market a few years ago there were fears that the property would turn into yet another cookie cutter housing development. With a theater, a pond and retreat like forest, a rare asset would have been lost had it headed in that direction. So a long process kicked off with the Save Cranbury group galvanizing to preserve open space and many people jumping in to get involved, like the Norwalk Land Trust.
If anyone is pumping Diesel fuel at the gas station these days, they have seen peaks of $4.50 a gallon. Experts are predicting that could hit $5 a gallon very soon. Which means that when contracts are up on the fuel contracts that the BOE has in the next year, sticker shock will be an understatement. Which is why the BOE needs to reevaluate its school bus routes and plan for better fuel efficiencies.
Part of that planning process had better include the parents. For some reason in the last decade or so, parents have collectively decided that door to door kid transportation is necessary. Whatever happened to kids walking to school? Or walking to the bus stop?
Amanda Brown has figured out that if she wants to have influence over the BOE, she needs to have a seat at the table. The 2005-2007 attempted the joint meeting of the BET, BOE and council, but due to the mysterious vagaries of scheduling conflicts (Corda) they never got off the ground. So Brown figures on creating an ordinance to formulate a special joint committee.
Interesting idea. But with the balance of the BOE shifting back towards common sense with common purpose, the obstacles of the past may not be present. The Hour got qutoes from the usual suspects on the idea, the recap:
There’s news up in them dar hills. The finance committee of the BOE met last night to discuss the imminent departure of Stuart Opdhal. The meeting was reported in the Hour. I say, day three of good governance. But what is Corda thinking? Before Opdhal resigned it was the battle of the OK corral, high noon– Corda defending against hiring a finance director and the reformist BOE-ers exercising that great equalizer of Dr. Check and Mr. Balance.
Must have been a construction committee meeting recently because we find more on the construction pace at Norwalk High School in the Hour.
On Wednesday night, Shamas updated members of the Norwalk Facilities Construction Commission on where the renovation stands and where it’s headed. The project, now underway for nearly two years, is slated for completion this August.
At present, contractors are wrapping up Phase 7 of the nine-phase renovation. Phase 7 entails the second floor of A House, which is home to mathematics and special education. On April 11, work will proceed to first-floor B House, which will be home to social studies, Shamas said.
