Schools

Common Council Caps Schools Budget at 2.4 Percent Increase

The Common Council rejected calls for higher education spending, including a proposal to raise spending by 3.6 percent.

The Common Council, in a 10-4 vote Tuesday, stuck to the minimal 2.4 percent education budget expansion recommended by Mayor Richard A. Moccia and the city finance director and rejected the 4.7 percent increase requested by the Board of Education.

The cap, if the council decides not to change it later in the city's budget-approval process, would raise taxes for a roughly median homeowner in the city by $107, a year, city Finance Director Thomas Hamilton estimates. Overall city spending would rise by 2.64 percent, to $287.1 million, an increase of $7 million over last year's cap.

The Common Council also voted to approve a resolution asking the Board of Education and Board of Estimate and Taxation to look for ways to save money while maintaining current education programs. For the most part, that means stopping wage increases already negotiated in union contracts, council members said.

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"If the unions negotiate in good faith, there are $3.2 million they can contribute (toward lowering spending), and programs don't need to be cut," said Nicholas Kydes, chairman of the Finance Committee of the council."What has to happen is everyone has to come and negotiate in good faith, and we can breidge the gap that the Board of Education is looking at."

Kydes' committee voted 4-2 to approve the same budget numbers on Thursday night, after a long public hearing attended by 700 people, most of them strong supporters of the Board of Education's higher spending proposal. On Tuesday evening, about 200 people turned out, failing to meet the "challenge" issued by the Norwalk Parent Teacher Organization to "fill the Concert Hall" in City Hall.

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"We have to look at the total picture—the other city unions sacrificed, and we had to work together to bridge a gap, and I have to believe it can be done," Kydes said. Over the past two years, most Norwalk government unions outside the Education Department have accepted wage freezes of various types. Similar wage restrictions need to occur within the Education Department, he said. "The taxpayers cannot afford to pay any more."

Three Board of Education members—Steven Colarossi, Chairman Jack Chiaramonte and former Chairman Glenn Iannaccone—stood together in front of the Common Council to say they would work to restrain spending if the council approved the finance director's recommended budget.

"We will do what we can to make sure student programs are not eliminated," Colarossi, speaking on behalf of all three, told the council.

Common Council member Nora King proposed a last-minute compromise that would have raised education spending by 3.7 percent, but she only received support from fellow members Laurel E. Lindstrom, David Jaeger and Carvin J. Hilliard.

"The buzz word seems to be 'shared sacrifice,'" King said. "I really think that is a pretty good compromise." King's proposal would have raised taxes on a median city home by another $49 per year.

"I'm a real estate appraiser," King said. "I talk to real estate agents all the time. They tell me ouver and over again they cannot get people to move to Norwalk because of the schools."

But other members of the council said no further increases should be made in taxes, particularly when unions in the Education Department hadn't agreed to the same kinds of wage limitations as most public employee unions in the rest of city government had.

Council member John Tobin said he would have preferred no increase at all in the budget, and would support that if he thought there was a majority on the council for the idea.

"The Common Council in no way wants to take anything away from our children," council member Joanne Romano said. But, she said, seniors on fixed incomes, the unemployed and the underemployed needed to be shielded from higher taxes. "We can't overtax the people."

The council's votes came after a two-hour public hearing in which many speakers made the same or similar points that had been made at previous hearings.


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