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NORWALK, Conn. – The Norwalk schools will have an additional $466,000 this year to offset any potential cuts in its budget after the Board of Estimate and Taxation unanimously approved a plan introduced by Mayor Richard Moccia on Monday night.
“It’s not everything that everybody wants, but there are times when you do as much as you can, and you can’t do as much as you’d like to,” Moccia said.
The schools will pay $2.666 million out of next year’s budget and $1.333 million out of the following year’s budget to cover a $4 million shortfall in its health insurance costs.
This is a revision of a plan approved earlier this month that would have allowed the schools to pay $2.2 million of the costs out of next year’s budget.
“I do believe we’ve reached the outer limit of our ability to provide assistance at this time,” BET Chairman Fred Wilms said. He said he liked the plan because it created a balance between providing relief to the Board of Education while not creating a burden for the taxpayers.
Finance Director Thomas Hamilton said he was comfortable with this move, which would give the Norwalk schools more time to pay back the funds. Hamilton spoke with representatives from Moody’s and said the move would not hurt Norwalk’s credit rating. He said he would not recommend extending the payback time any further.
Hamilton also said he would not support taking money from the general fund to cover the deficit. From a ratings standpoint, the most creditworthy way to handle the problem would be to issue a special tax, he said, but that would be “an extraordinary step for the city” and one without precedent.
“Generally speaking, most people would say that a special tax should be reserved for truly catastrophic things, such as if you had tens of millions of dollars’ worth of damage from some catastrophic storm.”
Hamilton said the city will be taking steps to prepare for an audit by an outside firm to determine how the deficit was created, what steps could have been taken to prevent it and what Norwalk can do to prevent a similar situation from occurring in the future.
Comments (6)
While I don't agree that raising our taxes is the answer, nor do I think that ruining our children's education is the correct answer. I don't understand why we are keeping every sport program out there (instead of pay to play), yet cutting education is perfectly ok. the message being sent is that sports is more important than a good education. I also know that other plans have been laid on the table and not even considered. I wish our children were more important - it's their education that is our future, a good school system is what bring families into Norwalk, raising property values. We are losing more than just $ here folks - it's quite scary. Honestly - if we could afford to sell our home and move we would. If we could afford private education - we would. But we can't...and I'm scared for our kids.
We have a shortfall because we pay them too much. Flo is right to a degree, but it shouldnt matter what anyone makes anyplace else. We can only pay what we can afford & raising or creating new taxes is not the answer. Fiscal responsibility is.
If we have a shortfall because of health insurance, then take away the future health insurance until it's paid up. How many of us are living without health insurance, and more without jobs at all... the perks of city personnel, BOE or not, are out of line with the rest of the state. How about the DPW survive without pay raises? This is all criminal.
They need to put the teachers back into the classrooms and especially schools like Wolfpit that are getting gutted with a 30% reduction in staff more then any school in Norwalk! If they freely admit that Wolfpit wasn't t targeted then now's the time to prove it!
So now begins the discussion, what cuts will be put back that were taken out. Will it be what Mayor Moccia and Superintendent Marks have stated, Librarians, Aides and Security personnel or will they put Teachers back in the classrooms and not make our students attend school in classes of 25 plus students?
Dr. Marks says she is "waiting to make my recommendations for the $466K to see if we get additional resources."