Petition Seeks To Stop Cuts To Milford Board of Education Budget

MILFORD, CT — The $11 million question hanging over the head of the city has resulted in advocates of education in Milford to circulate a petition urging the Board of Finance not to make proactive cuts to the Board of Education budget tonight.

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has proposed to strip Milford of $11 million in state funds, primarily for education, in an effort to help the state plug its multi-year billion dollar budget deficits. Some local officials including a Finance Board member have discussed whether cuts should be made now to the schools budget in an effort to be proactive about Malloy's proposal.

But other officials point to the fact that the school budget proposal carries a less than 1 percent increase and that it's unlikely the Legislature will approve Malloy's plan as proposed, and it's best to wait and see what happens at the state level before taking action locally.

As of 9 a.m. Wednesday, 118 people have signed the petition urging the Finance Board not to make proactive cuts tonight at its budget deliberation meeting.

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A group called MilfordEd Advocates has circulated the petition on Petition.org.

• You can read and sign the petition here.

Here are some of the highlights of the petition:

On this five-member board, two members have suggested the board consider making anticipatory cuts in education spending as our city faces a proposed -- but not yet determined loss of approximately $11 million in state Educational Cost Sharing (ECS) funding for the coming year....

We will know more about the potential outcome of these state fiscal determinations when the Board of Aldermen considers and votes on the Milford city budget in May. Decisions regarding how our city will respond to significant losses in state funding can and should be made at that time. To do so now would be premature and not based on any factual amount.

Additionally, the Milford Board of Ed has presented the Board of Finance with a very conservative budget, one that it feels will “sustain and continuously improve the education provided to the children in Milford,” while already taking into consideration potential losses in state funding.

The total requested budget increase for Milford school spending is just .791 percent, which is the smallest increase proposed by a superintendent in 15 years and includes cuts to staffing, educational supplies and utilities.

We appreciate statements made by Board of Finance Chair Brian Lema and Mayor Ben Blake indicating the education budget is very conservative and it is not a place where we should be looking to make significant cuts at this time.

WHY DO WE NEED TO ACT NOW?

Should the Board of Finance make cuts to the school budget now, before the state funding has been determined, it would require a two-thirds majority of the Board of Aldermen to overturn. As such, cuts made by this appointed five-member board are extremely difficult to overturn and should not be preemptively decided on until the full impact of state funding is known.

For these reasons, we respectfully ask the Milford Board of Finance to make no cuts to the city's education budget now so that they can instead be considered in May by the Board of Aldermen.

This petition will be delivered to:

• Milford Board of Finance