About one year ago I commented in a letter to the editor on the extraordinary year end spending by the Woodstock BOE – nearly $300,000 in checks written on the last day of the fiscal year, a $700,000 increase in spending during May and June, a bump over the baseline established in the first ten months of the year – all to be sure to expend the budget before the fiscal year ended.  I also pointed out that we had just passed a new budget that was characterized by the BOE and certain members of the BOF as a “bare bones maintenance budget” – no frills just the essentials.  Well now the numbers are in, numbers I reviewed with the board of finance (BOF) at their last meeting. (Click for Video).

 

Well, this year was a real challenge with new records set for both May and June (see chart for June bounce only) with over $900,000 spent above the baseline from the first ten months, and an additional $45,000 sent back to the town that they just couldn’t manage to spend. 

How was such a feat accomplished?  Well, with almost 400 line items and thanks to a state statute that unlike the town government allows the BOE to transfer money from any account to any other account without a town meeting even if it’s over $20,000, it just requires a bit of creativity to effectively bury it.  There are a few items however that stand out: first are the two school buses that were NOT budgeted but for which funds were available – a little over $125,000 (in this bare bones maintenance budget), then there is the ~$139,000 of unbudgeted “equipment” now claimed to be part of the “three year technology plan” – the “plan” that was budgeted for a grand total of $55,620 over the last three years against the $490,483 which was spent; interestingly enough the bulk of which was spent in May and June of each year.  Apparently this critical need was never recognized during the first ten months of the each of the last 3 years, the purchases weren’t made until the end of the year so the equipment couldn’t be used until the next school year.  You have to ask yourself if this was part of a technology plan, “why wasn’t it in the budget?” or “was this just a big deception?” – they say whatever they think will be accepted during the budgeting process and then do what they like after it is passed, just as the vice-chair of the BOE told the BOF it could do two years ago in a public meeting.  Oh yes, the $45,000 that was returned to the town; it came from an account called “public enroll growth”, a SPED account, that has been budgeted for at least the last six years and from which not one dime has been spent for that purpose.

Whenever I raise these issues I get attacked as “anti-education”.  I would like to make it clear, as an engineer and a retired businessman who spent many years working to retain and bring in new, good paying, manufacturing jobs to this area, I am acutely aware of the importance of education and technology in today’s world.  The real issue here is NOT the money; it’s the mismanagement and deceit.

Hopefully this is all about to change after November 3rd, but for that to happen we need board members on the BOE and the BOF who will ask the hard questions and demand answers that make sense.

Dave Richardson
Woodstock

Independent candidate for the Board of Finance

Paid for and approved by David Richardson 796 Route 197 Woodstock, CT