Timberlane’s annual Deliberative Session was held in the gym last night. The empty seats far outnumbered the occupied seats and once again it was a sea of blue t-shirts. And once again a motion to lower the budget failed.
Dr. Kim Farar, selectman from Danville, offered a very modest cut of just $333,958 to round the budget to $69 million. Asked what a cut to the budget would mean, Superintendent Metzler instantly responded that it would mean cutting 6 teachers. No doubt if anyone would have ventured a deeper cut, the children would be bringing their own toilet paper to school and using outhouses.
A very perceptive Carsten Springer* from Danville questioned why Dr. Metzler would immediately go for the teaching staff when the administration is so top heavy in our district. There was no answer because of course there is no answer except, “What, you don’t like threats?”
Dr. Farar’s motion failed resoundingly. So here are the SAU’s predicted increases to the school tax rate (combined local and state) for the proposed budget alone without the incremental increases of the additional warrant articles. Remember that town and county taxes must be added to this to give you your total tax rate come December.
2015 2016
Sandown: $21.14 $23.62 (11.7% increase)
Danville $23.58 $25.15 (6.6% increase)
Atkinson $14.93 $16.08 (7.7% increase)
Plaistow $17.11 $18.00 (5.2% increase)
Budgeted cost per student in 16/17 will be $19,600 – for every single student from Pre-K to 12th grade.
Not only do you have an SAU that answers genuine questions with reflexive threats, you have an ever increasing tax burden for no substantive increase in value anywhere. This is going to continue until the entire public school system collapses under its own greed and mismanagement because parents are cowed by threats, voters stay home through indifference or hopelessness, and employees control the administration and the votes at Deliberative.
$50,000 War Chest
Kelly Ward motioned to add $50,000 to the budget, nominally for the cost of accounting research for a final buyout number for Sandown’s withdrawal. This was seconded by Sandown’s Lee Dube and ultimately fell to defeat by the body. I’m ashamed of my fellow townsmen for playing along with the district on this point. There is no circumstance in which Sandown would agree to a substantive buyout fee, so spending money to calculate it is absolutely, unequivocally unnecessary and everyone knows it.
But let’s look at what they are pretending to say. A few months ago the school board approved $30,000 (no bid, of course)to hire an accounting consultant. Now it is $50,000 at $100 an hour (also no bid, of course). This represents 500 hours of work. That is 14 weeks! Are the files in dry storage somewhere in Alaska reachable only by snow shoe? We could have the whole district audited three times over for this amount of money and that would be a far better investment. What were your Sandown representatives thinking in putting this forward last night? It is one thing to be against withdrawal. It is a much different matter to try to punish taxpayers in order to make a statement.
But that isn’t what they were really doing. They were really trying to get $50,000 for the district to use as a war chest to fight Sandown in court over withdrawal. You heard it here first, folks. That is exactly what is going on and when I tried to point this out at Deliberative the moderator cut me off. Using your money against you is a fine art honed at SAU55. It started with phony criminal complaints and no trespass orders and it quickly morphs into court battles. “This district has proved it cannot be trusted with a legal line,” said Arthur Green last night. It couldn’t be truer.
The Moderator Who Doesn’t Know His Job
Then there’s the issue with the moderator who won re-election by acclamation last year. Here is a man who does not understand that Deliberative Session is a meeting of the people – not the administration. He takes pride in recognizing me last he when I have my hand up first, or not recognizing me at all. He cuts me off with relish and turns the mic off on Arthur Green. He limits discussion on items controversial to the administration so strictly that it becomes comical to see people trying to make their points over his overbearing tactics. He allows clapping and cheering as though at a pep rally. Last year he had a police officer stand by my side should I attempt to speak over my 3 minutes. He is everything a moderator should not be because he wears his biases on his sleeve and imposes it on the body.
Voters and taxpayers of Timberane: you have now gotten the government you deserve. The symptom is taxes. The disease is much more profound. Sandown at least has an option. The rest are absolutely trapped.
P.S. The default budget is higher than the proposed budget so don’t think there is relief in voting down the budget. Suck it up, shell it out and be sure to stay positive because critical voices are destructive to the district.
*CORRECTION. The original post named Curt Springer as the speaker. It was, in fact, Carsten Springer. Apologies to both gentlemen.
timberlaneandsandown 
I did not attend this years meeting after what I saw last year. Last year, I was very insulted with the way that the meeting was turned into a Friday Night Football Rally. I consider a 69M budget a pretty serious topic, but evidently this administration does not. I guess it is not that serious when all the cards are stacked in your favor and those that disagree with you are virtually powerless to keep you from spending more money to educate fewer students every year.
I hold on to the belief that each year more tax payers will wake up to what this administration is doing and eventually things will change.
I hold to that belief, too, which is why I have hope that we will one day soon have our own school district. Always nice to here from you. Thanks for writing.
Let me explain my rationale behind supporting the $50k increase to the budget; I’ll use an analogy.
A loving couple, each with their own overseer of their finances, decide to marry. After many years of wedded bliss one half of the couple makes it known that they desire a divorce. As expected disagreements ensue over the division of their assets. They reconcile their differences for a short period of time but nevertheless things are not working out. The one half of the relationship again makes it known that they desire to “begins action” for divorce but approval is required from their financial advisor. Would it not be responsible and prudent for the other halves financial advisor to recommend setting aside funds for the potential ensuing litigation? Granted the funds may not be necessary however, it would be negligent for the advisor to not suggest the allocation and reservation of funds.
Analogy aside, zero funding of WA13 was discussed at Sandowns Deliberative Session. It was made clear that the petitioners did not wish to have funds allocated to the WA but there is a potential that funds may be necessary. It was never made clear, at least to me, where the funds would come from if they are needed. There was no motion from that body (Sandown Deliberative Session) to raise funds for this purpose. In light of that, I felt the motion at the TRSD Deliberative Session was wise which is why I seconded the motion.
Now, this will evolve into a debate about the sizable TRSD budget. As a member of the TRSD BudCom I feel that the budget present is adequate to fund the needs of the district. Could $50k be found within the budget for legal needs associated with a withdrawal (whether a study, legal guidance, etc), likely the answer is yes. The point is that funds would be necessary.
In the end, the body voiced their opinion and overwhelmingly voted against the recommendation. We (the collective we) can agree to disagree, that’s what makes this process and our country great! There’s no sense in brooding over it. We simply must move forward and continue to work towards making the district the best possible district it can be based on our convictions.
So, you knew you were trying to get legal fees and not accounting fees? And you are fine with the district using our money to fight against our independence if that is the wish of the people of Sandown? I am very disappointed in you, Mr. Dube.
With as little respect as is due Mr. Metzler for this dishonest answer, This is a standard Superintendent lie. 5 or so years ago I was at the TRSD deliberative session for two reasons, 1,) To point out that they had not had a budget committee public hearing as required by law. 2.) To request a $4M cut on the projected increase of the budget. This would have left the budget at approx. $56M and the previous year they had expended $54.4M. Doctor LaSalle began his powerpoint by claiming “the TOTAL cost to educate a child at Timberlane wa s$10,002/child” I asked him twice if he meant that, he said yes. Then I pointed out that the Budget they were requesting divided by the number of enrollments equaled $17,185/child. He stammered then admitted that his number was a state funding formula that omitted much. Later when I made my motion LaSalle read off a list of 39 items totaling $9.2M that would have to be eliminated to meet my proposed reduction. When I asked him why he would have to eliminate $9.2M when my cut left them $1.5M MORE than they had had this previous year in which they did EVERYTHING he claimed would have to be eliminated, he had no answer.
I got into these issues because I got pissed at my government lying to me while demanding my money. It still pisses me off, I wonder why it does not piss more people off and spur them to demand honesty and transparency, but it does not for some reason.
The best solution to this dishonesty, and it is systemic at SAUs, is to have one’s own district which is not under the thumb of any superintendent. That means an independent school board in authority over the superintendent and responsible for the budget in conjunction with a real, honest to goodness budget committee that does its job. The culture is too diseased to hope for this ever to happen at Timberlane. Both the school board and the budget committee are cardboard cutouts for the actual things.
Mark, the fundamental dishonesty in the budgeting is taking budget to budget instead of expenditure to budget. You caught on to that and so have we. The district runs on X but they budget X plus whatever they think they can get away with which is why the less info given the budcom and the school board – especially about staffing which is our biggest expense – pushes budgets higher and higher without sense or reason.