Opinion: Why You Should Vote 'No' on Brookfield's Budget

A letter to the editor from Richard Saluga

BROOKFIELD BUDGET: WHY RESIDENTS SHOULD VOTE NO

As an attendee and active participant (where permitted) in various Town meetings, I offer the following comments:

Brookfield’s budget has had a lack of transparency from the start, beginning with a budget roundtable with no budget to discuss; then, throughout the process, and as recently as this week, Town and Board of Education (BOE) officials have continued to offer no explanation for a number of questions about their budgets. If you can’t explain your own budget, you should expect residents to turn it down. And well they should!

According to the Superintendent, with 14.5 new positions as well as new programs, the BOE budget actually represents more than a 7 percent spending increase, something even a PTO leader recently said she would not support. However, the administration is using what appears to be budget gimmicks to make it look like that increase is much less.

First they took funds that were due to be returned to the taxpayers and decided instead to make these their permanent funds, and use them to pay for these new additions. In so doing, they don’t refer to this as new funding but rather ‘reallocated’ monies. Another example is when the BOE states that they reduced their health insurance by $800,000, they often fail to highlight that the First Selectman put half of it back in the Town budget. Third, they continue to budget more than necessary in several accounts to allow them to use those funds as they see fit next year. A good example is substitute teachers, where nearly $475,000 is budgeted (as was this year), even though they spend little more than $300,000, if that much, annually.

With health insurance, there appears to be in the combined Town/BOE budget, almost $2,000,000 for reserves, despite comments/documents indicating needing only a few hundred thousand to pay claims. In questioning this major discrepancy, I have yet to receive a rational explanation for it. The BOE appears to have about a $500,000 surplus this year in its benefits account, while the Board of Selectmen are retaining almost a $1,000,000 surplus from the Town’s current health insurance fund. The Board of Finance seemed to fail to even discuss this item in the public forums which I attended.

As a resident, I questioned an apparent mistaken $100,000 line item. Rather than simply acknowledge the error (as the Finance Director did), and remove it, officials offered four different explanations, all of which have been contradicted by their own comments and documents. They have since decided to ignore the matter, keep it in the budget, and refuse to discuss it further.

Brookfield could have a more transparent budget which includes increases and funds improvements, all with no tax increase – a win for everyone! In order to get that, voters should say NO on Tuesday. The Board of Finance needs to “sharpen their pencils” and eliminate unnecessary budgeted expenditures.

A NO vote is a vote to support all of Brookfield!

Rich Saluga, Brookfield, Conn.