Hamilton says Daily News got it wrong

By John McDaid | Saturday, 20 June 2009

Portsmouth Town Councilor Keith Hamilton took issue with a story in today's Newport Daily News, which said he planned to ask the Council to reconsider taking $217K from the schools. In an interview this afternoon, Hamilton said that the item he placed on the agenda for tomorrow's meeting refers to any surplus from the current 2008-2009 school year.

The $217K figure — which the Council considered reducing the school appropriation by, but rejected — is the amount of the surplus from 2007-08, said Hamilton. He said he did not know how much, if any, surplus there would be this year.

The text of the agenda item, available on the Secretary of State web site clearly states that the action refers to the current year: "1. Request Discussion and Action on Request to return any School Dept. Surplus from FY 08-09 Operating Budget to the Town’s General Reserve Fund."

At the School Committee meeting on June 9, where Finance Director Chris Tague reviewed the financial reports through the month of April, the current year's budget was described as "getting tighter and tighter." While there were some positive variances in impact aid, said Tague, there were offsetting shortfalls in utilities and other areas. "It will be a moving target right up till June 30th," Tague said.

If you're concerned about the school budget, probably wouldn't hurt to show up tomorrow night, but this does not appear to be the cut previously discussed.

Tags: 
Localblogging, 02871, Town Council, Budget

Comments

Maddie_C

Sat, 06/20/2009 - 6:16pm

The Daily News got their facts wrong? Gee what a surprise (not).

But their mistake is easy to help fix. All you need to do is go to their online website, pull up the article and post a comment about the error.

Oh, except you can't post comments online anymore. Oh, and, except you can't go online and see the article unless you've subscribed to the website for $350 bucks a year. But other than that its easy to help keep the Daily News up to their usual tip top performance.

Glad to hear the agenda isn't a revisit of the last go around, though. that was a bad idea. I don't necessarily think its a bad idea to talk about using THIS years surplus though. I don't think the school department has it earmarked against any line item for either this year or next, right?

John McDaid

Sat, 06/20/2009 - 8:16pm

Hi, Maddie_C...
Journalists struggle to get things right on tight deadlines (and these days, with decreasing staff) and I'm always inclined to be charitable and cut news people some slack. Readers tend not to notice the great number of things the media get right, but the things we miss.

However, as you note, it does point out the difference between a Web 2.0 approach and a paper-first model which can't be corrected until Monday's edition. One of this year's Knight Foundation grants just last week went to journalist (and geek) Scott Rosenberg, for a project called "Media Bugs" which would create the equivalent of a software developer's "bug tracking database" to log factual errors in news stories and facilitate correction. Such a system would become increasingly important if other papers follow the Daily News model and disappear from the public behind a paywall.

I believe that there is at least $17K in the current year's fund balance — since the School Committee voted on June 1 to appropriate it to the Council to help keep the Prudence Island school open. They also voted, at the same meeting, to reimburse the Council up to $27K from any audited surplus if the Town contributed to the Prudence effort. So there's at least the *possibility* of a fund balance this year, although the report on the April financials did not sound optimistic.

Cheers.
-j