Ah yes, the proposed BOE 2017-18 budget. Time to invoke that familiar refrain from our BOE elected officials, “It’s all about the children.” Last year it was a $7 million increase, now they want $5.2 million more for a grand total of $111, 981,480 or a $4.86% increase in your property taxes. How do you say, “Est pas extraordinaire?”
With the 15 or so highest paid employees on the town payroll (who are not teachers), how do BOE officials and Mademoiselle Robinson present his budget with a straight face and say there is no fat? You would think that someone would ask where the performance metrics are to justify two large increases in successive years. You would think someone would invoke the “A” word – accountable, or is that being unfair to “the children”?
Fortunately, from a quick perusal of the Facebook page Stratford Get Answers, it does appear that one of the newbies on the Town Council, Greg Cann, is asking some interesting questions. Probably the biggest would be to have COO Clarence Zachary provide explanations to just about everything in the budget. Monsieur Jezebel was always asking those types of questions, but could never quite get an answer.
All I can say is that it sure seems that we are extremely generous to our administrators and to a large number of part-time consultants making over $75,000. It would be interesting for someone to show us a study showing the correlation between large admin salaries and test scores. We have not found one as of yet, but your never know what Google will find. We now have a few weeks to dissect this budget before we see how Monsieur Johnny plans to pull a rabbit out of his hat with the municipal budget to keep taxes in check in this big election year.
Where is the illusionist when you need him? We think Johnny, Feehan, Daponte and the rest of the crew of BOE and Town Council members will need a large team of them to keep the tax bill in check.