Letter: RTM Must Balance Taxpayer Needs With School Spending

To the editor,

The RTM meeting (Thursday) night was concerning, especially conversations on the BOE increase currently in the TOF budget. Karen McCormack’s comments at 3:48 highlight this concern (YouTube link is www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNnsozPE4zI). Ms. McCormack asks (paraphrasing) why Fairfield BOE has requested a budget increase of 5.42 percent (about double the 13-year Fairfield average) when similar neighboring towns are averaging 2.7 percent this year (50 percent of Fairfield’s request!). Mr. Cummings confirms that neighboring towns are facing similar challenges to ours, but has trouble answering why our increase should be double that of other towns. He says that he can’t answer because he doesn’t know enough about the other town's spending history or their district structure, and that is fair but I would make two points:

1. If something we are doing in Fairfield (structure-wise) is resulting in double the cost increases of other towns, we should immediately take steps to fix that. The continuation of that structure choice is not sustainable or affordable. This is something that the BOE should have explored and taken action on long ago.
2. We have been told that our increases are largely the result of fairly recent special education spikes — something that was stated all districts are experiencing. Thus, it doesn’t make sense that we are the only district that has to solve this issue so expensively.

I would also point to Ms. Iacono’s statement during this meeting at 4:18 where she pleads for the BOE leadership to proactively come back to the RTM with budget concessions prior to the RTM vote.

This increase is too much for our taxpayers to bear. I urge everyone to contact their RTM reps to request a BOE budget reduction of at least $2 million, which equates to a reasonable 1 percent of the total budget.

Jan Carpenter