Tuesday’s Woodstock Public Hearing on next year’s budget held few surprises.  Attendance was heavily PTO/Teachers who decried “cuts” to education even though spending will increase by some $180,000 — $95,000 in the budget itself and another $85,000 in the offset between expiring ARRA funding and Education Job Funds – a total of 1.2%.  Only in government is a reduction of increases called a cut.

The real surprise came Wednesday morning when the headlines read “Malloy may target towns if unions balk”.  Was there/is there any doubt that one way or another, towns are going to get hit by reductions in state grants?  The state is broke.  There is no money.  State aid to towns is one of the top four spending categories in the state budget, and those top four account for more than 75% of state spending.  How can aid to towns not get hit?  Then guess what? Woodstock could lose as much as $2,077,037 – 2.62 mils.  Ouch.  Add that to the .42 mils already on the table from the BOF approved budget (so far) and you’ve got a 17% tax increase.  Of course that’s not what it will look like when we vote on the budget.  No, that’ll just be 2.3%.  The rest will come in a supplemental tax bill that you can expect sometime in August or September when the state finally has a budget.  Even if Malloy finds a way to cover half of that through concessions or layoffs, it could be a 9.7% increase.   But don’t worry the Woodstock school system is hiring; at least one teacher and could be as many as three even though enrollment is going down from 917 to 907 according to Superintendent Baran’s plan and they already know that next year they are facing at least a $600,000 shortfall in revenue.  Guess how long that job(s) will last?

On a more positive note; the town government budget is only going up $27,000 or .6% and this after two years of declining budgets.  And when asked if he’d ask for more if the BOF would let him, Allan Walker said, “NO”.  Unfortunately we can’t afford that either.

Time for spend, spend , spend to end.  Dave Hosmer reported again that more and more taxpayers are having difficulty paying taxes due now.  Payment plans and the use of credit cards to cover taxes is on the upswing – ten percent already on payment plans according the last BOF minutes.  We need some assurance that if the state cuts funding, as they are more than likely to do, it’s not going to be a simply a pass through to the taxpayers; that spending will be looked at again.  Remember this budget will come to a vote on May 17^th.  That’s your chance to be heard.

Dave Richardson