Council Fails To Override Mayor’s Veto Of Wallingford Budget

WALLINGFORD, CT — The effort to override Mayor Vincent Cervoni’s veto of the Town Council’s adopted budget for 2024-25 and restore funds to the Board of Education failed at a special council meeting on Thursday night.

Cervoni notified the council last week that he was using veto powers in the Town Charter to reduce the council’s increased allocation to the Board of Education’s budget, and lower the mill rate in the process.

The Town Council approved, by a 6-3 vote, an amended town budget that added $2.3 million to the Board of Education’s allocation than was originally proposed by Cervoni.

Cervoni reduced the council’s budget increase from $2.3 million to $1.1 million, with a resulting mill rate of 30.66. The council’s amended budget had set the mill rate at 30.93 mills. A mill is equal to $1 of tax for each $1,000 of assessment.

The council needed seven votes to override Cervoni’s veto, but the motion failed in a 4-4 vote.

Democrats Sam Carmody, Jesse Reynolds, and Vincent Testa, along with Republican Autumn Allinson voted in favor of overturning the veto. Republicans Tom Laffin, Joe Marrone, Christopher Regan, and Christina Tatta voted against the motion. Republican Craig Fishbein was absent.

Testa, who requested the special meeting, said he wanted “one more opportunity” to express his support for adding additional funds to the Board of Education budget and to “respectfully ask the rest of my colleagues to reconsider what they decided previously.”

Testa said he appreciated the efforts of the administration and Cervoni to “do something, to acknowledge what we had expressed.”

“I understand the position he’s in, and everybody’s doing their own job here,” Testa said. “But there was a fairly strong position taken by the council to add $2.3 million, and it wasn’t an arbitrary number. It certainly wasn’t what a lot of people were hoping for, but there was a lot of thought put behind coming up with what number. And I think it’s a meaningful figure. I think it puts the board in a better position to navigate going forward.”

Laffin, who originally voted in favor of the council’s amended budget, said he appreciated the “creative and thoughtful effort that Mayor Cervoni put into trying to work out something else that he was more comfortable with.”

“The votes to get back to that $2.3 million don’t exist,” Laffin said. “That’s just a reality in this situation. I feel that it’s a fair compromise and I appreciate the efforts of Mayor Cervoni for the 1.1 [million]. The 2.3 [million] was above what I had originally, in my own mind, thought of as a compromise and I moved up with working with others. The 1.1 [million] is probably less, but here we are. And again, the votes just don’t matter. Anything after this is just a restatement of a position, for some people it’s theatrics. It’s a whole lot of different things.”

Laffin said his voting history has been that he’s “completely willing to go into battle, but when I’ve lost, I know that I’ve lost, and it’s on to us to work with what’s left and to try and regain some of that harmony.”

“I know not everyone is going to be happy, but not everybody was happy before either,” Laffin said.

Regan, who also originally voted in favor of the budget, said he thought Cervoni’s line item “veto compromise, is just that,” a compromise.

“Restoring $1.1 million was finding a middle ground,” he said. “Where neither side is happy, the burden is reduced, and sends a message to the Board of Education to start sharpening their pencil. We can not sustain year over year these types of increases, and yet here we are.

“A serious conversation, not a conversation, action regarding a school consolidation, our cost per student, union contracts, and how we maintain this antiquated infrastructure needs to occur. Not once, but in every single chance, and in every single conversation we have. I therefore, will reluctantly, vote no to turn over the mayor’s compromise.”

Reynolds said that over the past couple of years, the town wasn’t “adequately raising taxes, the way we should have.”

“And so now, we’re in a period where the pendulum has swung the other way and we don’t have any other options,” he said.

Reynolds said that “the anguish over losing your job ripples through a household, it ripples throughout a workplace, and it ripples throughout classrooms.”

He said that kids in the classrooms have spent a lot of times in these schools that “have not been updated, they have had broken boilers, and now we’re expecting them to sort of just suck it up and sharpen pencils and find money and fix things and such.”

“And all of the things that have been levied as criticisms about how much we pay for education, if you want to say that we’re underperforming, fair criticism,” Reynolds said. “If you want to say that there could be savings found elsewhere, fair criticism. If you say that combining the high schools would be a cost-saving measure, fair. Or you want to keep them apart. But every single justification, or reason for people who are uncomfortable with the amount of money that is getting spent this year is not addressed by not funding this. Not addressed at all.”

Reynolds said allowing the veto to stand is “going to do nothing that people want to see.”

“In fact, it’s going to make the situation worse,” he said. “So much so that we’re not correcting anything that’s going to make this come up again next year. And so, if we’re going to do something about this, then fine, let’s do something about this. But this, isn’t doing anything. This is just saying we’re not going to raise taxes as much.

“Your taxes are going up. Everybody’s tax bill is going up. It’s going up a couple of hundred, $300. At this point, we’re arguing over $10, $20, $30, and you’re talking about 10, 20, 30 people losing their job.”

Cervoni’s budget reduction to $1.1 million gives the Board of Education a total allocation of $118 million, which represents a $4.5 million increase over the current spending, but $2.8 million less than the board’s initial request.

Superintendent of Schools Danielle Bellizzi said the district is “about to embark on a crucial phase with the upcoming Special Budget Board of Education workshops.”

The board’s first budget workshop will be held at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, May 29, in the Board of Education Conference room.

“We will discuss the necessary reductions to our initial Board of Education budget request at these workshops,” Bellizzi said in a message to parents.

Watch Thursday night’s special council meeting below: