18/19 TRSD Draft 1: UP 3.4 million

Sandown residents, are you still reeling from the $30.78 per thousand tax rate, conveniently due two days after Christmas?

In yet more demonstration of a completely tone deaf school district management “team,” Timberlane’s draft one budget is asking for a $3.4 million INCREASE. We’re looking at the staggering ask of $75.1 million, up $3.347 million in one year. (Enrollment is still falling.)

Timberlane is the poster child for fiscal irresponsibility.  This draft is an insult to the will of the school board, to the beleaguered taxpayers of our district and especially to the oppressed taxpayers of Sandown and Danville.

School Board Chairman Boyle has been quite explicit.  He wants the budget DOWN by $3 million and the board agreed by straw poll that they wanted to see a significant decrease. Down by $3 million, up by $3 million – what’s the big deal?  Taxpayers in this district are a captive audience.  They can suck it up or they can sell their house with a depressed value.

The school board this year has given indications that they will be trying to bring you an honest default budget – a budget that is a true and lesser alternative to the proposed budget, which is the intended purpose of a default budget.  You can be sure this is going to be a mighty struggle since the culture in this district has been to manipulate the default budget to force you into choosing between the devil and the deep blue sea by ensuring the default budget is higher than the proposed budget.

It puzzles me profoundly that taxpayers prefer to suffer this unending abuse rather than assert their authority and undertake the education of their own children under their own management. Sandown is too large to be part of a cooperative district, especially one that knows no bounds on its fiscal appetites.

We all know draft one is just a draft.  With the mighty hand of God, the budget committee and the school board might be able to whittle it down by $1.5 million and think themselves heroic; meanwhile, draft one should have come in showing a $3 million DECREASE. It’s one big, insulting game on the back of your sweat.

2019 TRSD Budget – Draft 1

 

 

 

 

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