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NORWALK, Conn. — TheDailyNorwalk.com accepts signed, original letters to the editor. Letters may be emailed to letters @ thedailynorwalk.com.
To the Editor,
The time is now!
The head of the union can draw his line in the sand, but so long as the most ineffective educators (administration or teacher) are paid the same as the best with associated pension and health-care benefits out of step with the private sector, the taxpaying public will continue to throw mud at K-12 and society will suffer. So long as parents take no responsibility for what little Johnny does or doesn't do in the classroom, society suffers, and so long as an aging population doesn't think that kids today deserve as good an education as they got 40 years ago ... society suffers.
According to our children's most authoritative source, Wikipedia, the U.S. pension and health-care crisis has been predicted for years, as our contractual obligations and resources set aside to fund them have been out of sync. Shifting demographics since World War II, a lower ratio of workers per retiree and retirees living longer, and a lower birthrate, have all contributed to this financial crisis.
We are now faced with a $500 billion shortfall in pensions for teachers across the United States, according to Time. This is NOT an issue specific only to Norwalk.
The continued finger pointing in the press, comments and blogs without enumerating any helpful solutions is counter-productive, wastes energy and creates unnecessary panic. Replacing politically elected volunteers with another set of politically elected volunteers or replacing a superintendent who came from a highly functioning school district is not the answer, either.
We're in our fourth year of recession, and it's beginning to look like the new reality. Add a 20 percent to 25 percent drop in property values from the peak in 2005, nominal Educational Cost Sharing support from the state compared with other municipalities and a 7.7 percent unemployment figure across the state and you have private sector, city and state struggling to pay its bills.
Norwalk has a population of about 85,000 residents, according to the 2010 census. This consists of about 32,000 households, where 28 percent have children under the age of 18. The last census estimated there were about 9,000 kids in the school system but we know that we have 11,000. If you divide the total number of households into the 5,500 or so families in NPS, you have about 17 percent of the town using the public school system. As one of those families using the system, I also have to accept responsibility for balancing the educational needs of the town with the money we spend.
Our $10 million shortfall is not any one person's fault nor can one person fix it! This is not about a town not supporting education or its teacher and administrators. This is a STRUCTURAL problem that is only going to get more painful if we don't sensibly address the issue with all parties concerned.
There have been a number of solutions kicked around for years, but we knew that none of the solutions would satisfy EVERYBODY, so we collectively kicked the can down the road. Taxpayers and parents have watched education and public services decline, all the while, their tax bills have increased. Effective educators have understood these problems, but found lacking in the different stakeholder leadership any support to move beyond the status quo.
As they say, the rubber has hit the road, the kids are not going away and the coffers are stretched. The time is now for all of us to start thinking outside the box in terms of how we move Norwalk education forward and effectively solve both this near term and the longer term crisis or the Baby Boom generation can kiss its Social Security and pension goodbye when this current generation can't get jobs! The ratio of workers to retirees was 5:1 in 1960, 3:1 in 2009 and is projected to be 2:2.1 in 2030!
Here are some suggestions, but only if the collective leadership has the courage to implement by not letting a good crisis go to waste:
• Close an elementary school and beef up literacy in Grades K-3
• Close a middle school and turn it into a STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) magnet
• Investigate other relationships, such as Norwalk Community College, for more online learning classes directed at high school students – reducing butts in seats
• Turn Briggs High School into a good old-fashioned vocational school for those not wishing to go on to college – which incidentally doesn't necessarily guarantee one a job anyway!
Folks need to stop finger pointing with generalities or looking for a smoking gun. This community needs to come up with solutions folks ... not rhetoric!
Comments (15)
ballooning pension costs and defined benefit plans of public employees are killing taxpayers around the country and Norwalk is no exception.
The pension and defined benefit plans of public employees are killing taxpayers around the country and Norwalk is no exception. Old Timer sounds like someone who collects a pension and has a defined benefit plan.
I sound like somebody who knows the history and really hates to hear the wrong people getting blamed by people who don't know what they are talking about. The pensions and "defined benefit" plans were negotiated by politicians who crunched the numbers and figured that was cheaper than giving the salaries we, and they, thought, at the time, were reasonable. Both sides hired actuaries and allowed for considerable inflation when figuring plan costs. Nobody is claiming the agreements were perfect, but they were, and are, a lot better than some people now try to make them sound. If both sides had fulfilled all their obligations as they came due, we would not be now hearing all the complaints about the terrible costs. We would, instead, be looking at surpluses in pension funds. The city has managed to avoid paying for a lot of the defined benefits they contracted for and passed a lot of the expense off to retirees. Everybody underestimated the increase in cost of medical benefits and retirees are now paying unanticipated premiums for medical insurance.
Old Timer
It IS true, though, that you're currently receiving a defined benefit pension plan. More power to you -- you put in a lot of years, it was part of the contracts you negotiated as a Union officer, and the City must honor those contractual obligations. But that sort of benefit is unaffordable for current workers and the City needs to move to defined contribution, 401k plans as soon as possible. It will take a long while for savings to kick in, but there's really no choice.
I understand that Westport did the same thing recently with City employees, when will Norwalk follow?
Yes it is true. The pensions would not be such a burden if the City had matched employee contributions each year. When you hear the City claim a number as a cost for pensions, they "forget" to break out what part of that number is employee contribution and what part is City. That gives the misleading impression that the total is a cost borne by a current operating budget. Even if they went to a 401k plan,it would still require regular contributions from both sides. With the City history, the unions would probably require somebody other than the City manage those funds. I don't see agreement on a big change very likely, but anything is possible.
If I wanted to use my given name here, I might share the real numbers in my case and you would not believe them. Our pensions are fixed the day we retire and look pretty good that day, but don't look like much years later. The contract I retired under also promised medical benefits that the City changed unilaterally a few years ago and I now pay premiums that were not part of that contract.
Between taxes and those premiums, I only get about half of my City pension and I would be in real trouble without benefits from other jobs my wife and I worked in the private sector.
By the way, I think you may be misinformed about Westport, unless there has been a recent change for new employees only, in some departments...
Detailed budgets, by department, seem to have been taken down, but here are some numbers that puzzle me. I understand that the various pension plans require a City contribution and an employee contribution totalling close to 15% of payroll. Out of a budget of
$ 296,842,367, there is only $7,129,662 listed as pensions. That seems short(only 2.4%), even if all that is reported is the City's half. That budget number is not all payroll, but most of it is. What am I missing ?
I think you're right about Westport, it was a change for new employees only. That's why it will take a very long time to achieve savings, but hey, it's something that can be changed and it will lead to savings down the road.
Good question regarding the pension contributions, maybe it has something to do with the fact that of the $296 million budget, not all of it is salaries, but even so it still seems short. In any case I would be really interested to know what the projections look like for the City's defined benefit pension obligations 3, 5, 7, and 10 years in the future. I really hope somebody isn't counting on 8% yearly returns or some similarly imaginary number. When that doesn't come true what kind of tax hikes and/or services cuts will we taxpayers have to bear?
She says; "our contractual obligations and resources set aside to fund them have been out of sync"
I have said many times here: contracts were made and the promises in them were ignored.
Different ways of making the same statement.
Unions agreed to a percentage of wages deducted by the city to be invested in a pension fund with a matching contribution from the city. The deductions were taken, but the investment into pension funds was not made for years, long before this administration, and now we are dealing with the results. Talk about finger-pointing, too many people are quick to blame the employees unions and ignore the cheating done by the city. For years, union attorneys told union leadership there was no cause for action as long as the benefit obligations were met. The problem was not limited to Norwalk or a specific union, and a law was finally passed forcing the cities to contribute to pensions finds. It is being done now, but it will take a long time to make the fund capable of meeting all it's obligations.
While that is happening, creative bookkeeping has managed slush funds to hide the problem from the public. Now we are dealing with what happens when slush funds (probably illegal) are mismanaged.
Only the mayor knows how much he knew, when he knew, and how much he failed to do to prevent this fiasco. It is hard to believe he wasn't well aware for years. His response suggests a stronger interest in putting this all behind us, than in fixing what looks like a systemic problem over a long period. Until somebody does a complete, independent audit we will never know. It would be good if we got our own answers and solved our own problem before some federal agency comes snooping around.
It's not a $10 million dollar shortfall as the Budget for next year needed to be cut by more than $6 million since January. A $4 million shortfall was found this month, by the Norwalk schools own finance person who has been in the job 1/2 a year. The vast majority of the $4 million are costs associated with retired employees insurance costs. The pension and defined benefit plans of public employees are killing taxpayers around the country and Norwalk is no exception.
More B/S Excuses.
Moccia, The BOE and Marks need to resign
Ms Thomson decries finger-pointing and suggests other causes for a ten million dollar shortfall in the school system budget. She seems to think nobody should be accountable. Budgets were prepared and approved by people getting paid a lot of money to accept accountability and the taxpayers paying the bill cannot give them all a pass. We are either dealing with systemic corruption or monumental incompetence, or some combination where we have been getting ripped off for years and the people responsible for protecting us failed miserably. Until we know for sure, and people are held accountable, not another dime of taxpayer money should be dumped into this bottomless pit.
Old Timer
I don't think she said that nobody should be held accountable, rather her point was that there's a lot of finger-pointing and not much talk of solutions regarding ways to make the cuts without destroying the education system. I agree with you that there needs to be a clear explanation - that a layperson who isn't familiar with the BOE's accounting system can understand - of exactly how this happened, and what steps will be taken so that it never happens again. It's surprising to me that we still haven't heard that.
There is plenty of blame to go around, I don't think it's possible to lay the blame at the feet of any one person. Employees of the BOE appear to have failed in their duty to track funds. The BOE apparently did not understand the extent of these failures. But the BOE are all volunteers, as Ms. Thomson points out. Will it help us if they all resign and are replaced with a completely new and inexperienced BOE? Some have pointed fingers at the Mayor. Nearly all of those pointing fingers at the Mayor were people who were already predisposed to criticize him. Certainly he has some responsibility too, although it's hard for me to see how the entire shortfall can be blamed on him and him alone when there are numerous other individuals whose full time job is to oversee the proper administration of district funds.
At the end of the day the shortfall happened, and that can't be changed. The question is, how will we as a City deal with it?
Ms Thompson
Thank you for including the statistics cited in your letter, they were very interesting. I agree with you that there need to be immediate steps taken to address ballooning pension costs.
HAHAHA
You say "Nearly all of those pointing fingers at the Mayor were people who were already predisposed to criticize him.". Kind of like you are predisposed to defend him.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
You and a lot of others assume the only solution is cutting costs and that may be true. Some of us think none of us will know if the real problem is costs that need to be cut, or a systemic problem with extra checks being issued to non-existent people and cashed by insiders who belong in jail. Until we have the results of an independent audit that verifies every payment, employee or vendor, as legitimate over a period of several years, none of us will have reliable answers and all we are doing here is speculating on a very limited amount of data.
Old Timer
I agree with you that we are all speculating on a very limited amount of data. I also agree that there needs to be an independent audit or, in lieu of that, a clear explanation - easily understandable by a layperson - of how the BOE is certain that no fraud occurred, despite years of sloppy financial practices. I have read that COO Longo conducted an internal audit which was reviewed by an accounting firm from New Haven, I would be very interested to know more about the results of that.
After an audit, the finger pointing will surely continue, but at least we will have a better idea of the extent to which it's justified.
I don't assume that cuts are the only option, especially if cuts will truly decimate the schools. However I do start from the assumption that cuts are the only option until somebody proves otherwise. Government budgets become bloated when nobody is willing to stand up and challenge existing practices which have been in place for years.
I also want to know more about the 400 additional employees hired by the BOE over the past three years. Who are those people and what jobs do they perform?
Mr Longo deserves credit for what he has done. Some audits review accounting practices and check arithmetic. Others assume the arithmetic is OK and review management practices and verify expenses are only being paid to REAL employees and REAL vendors. It is the second kind of audit I believe is called for in this case. With a budget this size, the opportunity for systemic corruption is mind boggling. There is nobody now able to verify that is not the problem. Until such an audit is completed, any effort to calm this down enables more corruption. I would be delighted to be proven wrong, but it can't happen without an independent fprensic audit. If the City doesn't do it, we may have to deal with some other agency doing it for, and to, us.