Mayor: Eye Will Be on Schools When Budget Cuts are Made

Windsor residents sent a resounding message Tuesday when they voted against the town council’s proposed budget by a vote of 1,798 to 1,164.

While the ballot question didn’t give voters the opportunity to tell town officials which part of the budget they’re unhappy with, the budget’s make up and chatter heard on the street will inform deliberations as town council members prepare to shed spending.

Leading up to the vote, most residents voicing their displeasure with the budget, expresses “a lot of discontent with the board of education,” according to Windsor Mayor Don Trinks, who said that’s where his attention will fall when looking to make cuts.

According to Trinks, the fact that funding for the board of education, at $63 million, makes up the bulk of the town’s budget ($101 million), it would make sense that most of the cuts needed are made to education.

Not only will cuts have to be made, but they’ll have to bear some weight as well, said Trinks.

“The message is significant,” he said of the vote Tuesday night. “I think our next work should be significant. In the past, we nickel and dimed our way to getting (the budget) passed... We need to put out a meaningful number with significance to answer this mandate we’ve been sent.”

The mandate — to make cuts — means jobs will come under fire, according to Republican Town Councilman Don Jepsen, who led an effort to compromise with Democrats on the proposal sent to referendum Tuesday.

“I thought that a 2.2 percent increase in a year when all the labor contracts were going up about 2 percent was fair,” Jepsen said of the bi-partisan spending plan after referendum results were tabulated Tuesday.

“If that’s rejected, then we have to look at layoffs. That’s what we were trying to avoid, but that’s what we’re going to have to look at,” he added.

The execution of the cuts will be harder than it may seem, however, Jepsen said.

First, the town council cannot tell the board of education what to cut, it can only tell it how much money its funding proposal will be reduced by.

Second, the amount of money reduced from the board’s proposed funding is limited by state law. Windsor’s identification as an alliance district — one of the state’s 30 worst performing school districts — means the district cannot be budgeted to receive less than it receives in the current fiscal year.The minimum amount of funding the district can receive is a number set by the state when it adopts its budget — a number that hasn’t been calculated and still won’t be when Windsor’s budget returns to referendum on June 4.

According to Jepsen, the council will have to play a bit of a guessing game — a game that will be difficult to navigate.
The last time the town’s budget failed at referendum, 2008, the town council was able to make cuts and present a zero-percent increase on a third try.
Grand list growth made it possible, according to Jepsen, but that won’t be the case this year.

“We might find things (other than town jobs) we can cut, but there’s a limit to that, and that creates a hole for next year,” said Jepsen, who added that $600,000 will be about the most the council can reduce from proposed education spending.

The guessing game the council plays will also include an estimate of what number will receive approval at referendum in a couple of weeks.

In a $101.2 million budget, to reduce the increase by 1 percent, just over $1 million will have to be removed from the town’s proposed spending plan.