World Languages Department Chair James LeBaron provides a video guide to the upcoming deliberative session at Newfound Regional High School.
Voters in the Newfound Area School District adopted a tax cap that limits the property tax assessment to the seven member towns to 2 percent a year. That means that, no matter how much the school district budget increases or decreases from one year to the next, the portion of revenues coming from local taxes cannot increase by more than 2 percent. If, for instance, the district receives extra grant money or more state and federal aid, the district can increase spending by much more than 2 percent and still make sure the assessment to the towns does not increase by more than 2 percent. On the other hand, if other revenue decreases, the budget may have to shrink in order to keep the increased tax assessment to no more than 2 percent.
That is exactly what happened this year. Some expenses increased while revenue decreased, and as a result, there was a substantial budget shortfall. The tax cap meant that the school board and budget committee had to find areas to cut in order to remain within the limits imposed on the tax assessment.
Budgeting is a complicated process and is hard to explain, so World Languages Department Chair James LeBaron produced a YouTube video to explain both the process for the annual school district meeting, scheduled for this Saturday, January 30, and what “cuts” are being proposed.
One must keep in mind that the budget cuts being discussed are reductions in the proposed budget, not reductions from current spending. It is common for a superintendent to present a proposed budget that includes new positions and programs to move the district forward, and that is the budget that faces cuts to bring it in line with the tax cap. It would be helpful to have the current spending levels for comparison, but that information is not readily available to members of the public who must rely on the budget committee to look at actual spending as well as proposed spending.
The mandatory budget hearing is supposed to translate all that so voters know what’s at stake, but the pandemic forced the budget hearing to take place in a gymnasium with poor acoustics, and kept many people from attending, so the only way for others to hear the budget presentation was to view a video in which most of what was said was unintelligible, or to stop by the superintendent’s office to pick up a copy of the budget. There will be copies available at the deliberative session.
School district administrators have been warning for years that they are running out of ways to keep the budget within the tax cap when many of the costs, such as electricity, as well as the revenue sources, are beyond their control. The district has renegotiated contracts and adopted energy-saving measures to bring down expenses, but has mostly run out of places to reduce the budget without going to educational programs themselves.
In order to stay under the cap this year, the district is looking at such drastic measures as eliminating middle school and junior varsity sports. The complete list includes reducing supply purchases by 20%, or $63,463 (again, a cut from the proposed budget but not necessarily from the amount spent in the current-year budget); $22,945 from library books; $66,118 from field trips; JV athletics, $30,202; a supervisory position, $29,748; a drug and alcohol counselor, $49,891; middle school sports, $72,959; two teachers, $168,174; a music teacher, $68,454; a special education position, $83,349; the principal of Danbury Elementary School, $93,960; an instrumental music teacher, $29,131; a paraprofessional, $29,131; technology spending, $295,496; and facilities maintenance, $476,545.
Two of the articles on the school district warrant aim to help by increasing the limit or eliminating the tax cap entirely. Both are petitioned articles by district voters. One would increase the cap from 2 to 3 percent; the other would rescind the earlier vote that adopted the tax cap.
Taking A Stand
An article from Moyers on Democracy provides a good example of the role the media play in news coverage. The author, Ti-Hua Chang, was a student of CBS producer Fred Friendly, and he recounts a discussion about the reporter’s responsibility to tell the truth, even if it means forfeiting one’s job. Edward R. Murrow did that when reporting on Senator Joseph McCarthy’s campaign to ruin people’s lives by painting them as communists.
“Our job as journalists,” Chang writes, “is to tell as close to the truth as humanly possible, and when the facts are abundantly clear, there are times we have to take a stand on an issue in order to do that.
“January 6th is one of those issues and this is one of those times.”
Figuring Out What Happened
Another article, in the Washington Post, looks into the reasons the National Guard did not respond sooner when insurgents captured the US Capitol. It explains that the Guard had orders not to act without the express consent of the Pentagon.
After the excessive military response to the Black Lives Matter protests last summer, authorities were anxious to avoid repeating the mistakes, and therefore wanted strict control over how and when troops responded to events during the protest over Trump’s election defeat.
Major General William J. Walker, the commanding general of the District of Columbia National Guard, and former Army secretary Ryan D. McCarthy, along with other top officials, briefed the House Appropriations Committee about their response behind closed doors on Tuesdays. In remarks to the Washington Post, McCarthy said, “Any time we would employ troops and guardsmen in the city, you had to go through a rigorous process. As you recall, there were events in the summer that got a lot of attention, and that was part of this.”
Other sources are saying that one-fifth of those storming the Capitol had military connections, leading to speculation about the events of January 6 being a genuine coup attempt. Then there are those who believe simply that authorities have a double standard when dealing with white rather than black citizens.
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