STAMFORD — The city’s Board of Finance made a major cut to the school district’s operating budget Tuesday night, arguing that the proposed ask from the school board would be “unsustainable” and would create “tremendous hardship” on Stamford residents.
Those were the words used by Board of Finance Chair Mary Lou Rinaldi before the board voted to cut $16.7 million from city and school operating budgets combined — including a $12.1 million reduction to the school district’s bottom line. The proposed budgets, prior to the cuts, would have represented a 7.89% tax increase compared with this fiscal year, Rinaldi said.
“To impose a tax increase of this magnitude when people are struggling with higher food and gas prices, higher rents and other expenses just didn’t seem fair to us,” the board chair said.
About $3.6 million of the Board of Finance’s cut to the Board of Education operating budget will not need to be made up by the school district. That’s because $1.6 million will come from updated estimates to health care premiums and other post-employment benefits, and another $2 million would come from anticipated additional state funding, said board member Richard Freedman.
That leaves about $8.5 million in savings that the Board of Education will need to find, in addition to any possible cuts made by the Board of Representatives.
Freedman argued that the cut approved Tuesday night was actually a reduction of $2.3 million compared with the original ask from Stamford Public Schools Superintendent Tamu Lucero, plus the savings found from health benefits and state funding.
At the time, Lucero said she tried to keep costs down to improve the chances of gaining approval by city boards, which typically slash proposed school budgets. Over the last 12 years, the city boards have approved an average year-over-year increase of 2.95% to the school budget.
Her original request included a reduction of 27 middle school teacher positions due to a proposed change to the schedule at all middle schools, as well as 4.6 full-time equivalent elementary school instrumental music positions, 6.5 full-time equivalent office support specialist positions, two high school media center specialists, a high school athletic director and four middle school family advocates provided by local nonprofit Domus.
On the city side of things, the Board of Finance voted to cut the operating budget proposed by Mayor Caroline Simmons by $4.7 million, which includes a $250,000 reduction to the police department’s bottom line.
Additionally, the board decided to cut $100,000 for the design of a new East Side library. The original proposal was for $350,000.
Board of Finance member Geoff Alswanger said that there is support to spend up to $2 million in city funds to build the library, in addition to a $3 million federal grant.
“We strongly urge the library and city to instruct the architect that the maximum project budget is $5 million and to design the building accordingly,” he said.
Member Jennifer Munger said she was happy to see the board support the library by maintaining some of the funding.
“We did see a tremendous amount of support at the public hearings so I’m glad we could do that for the community,” she said.
“We obviously heard their comments and took it to heart,” Rinaldi said.