The Portsmouth Town Council approved a preliminary budget of $52.5M this evening, at the Paiva-Weed levy cap of 5.25%, but without warrant money for the Portsmouth School Department capital programs (buildings and IT). School Committee Finance chair Dick Carpender had approached the Council with a compromise, with each group picking up one of the warrants, but he met with a chilly reception from Council President Dennis Canario.

"I'm saddened to hear that you were going to find 30-40K to cover this warrant item when you couldn't keep the Prudence Island School open," said Canario. "I'm very concerned and very upset."

"We're not talking about $75K [the cost of Prudence]," replied Carpender. "We're talking $31K [the amount needed to cover debt service on the warrant]. I came here with a compromise that the committee looked at very seriously."

"Not seriously enough," said Canario. "There's priorities that need to be put in place." The Council proceeded to a vote, and the warrants were out. Canario moved the the next item and Carpender headed for the exit.

I must admit to missing the first half-hour of the proceeding: Hathaway School had their celebration for all the students who completed Principal Chistina Martin's "Journey Through Books," a program that requires kids to read, or have read to them, several hundred pages across major genres, which they then present quick oral reports on to build comprehension. Our first grader, Jack, was one of the more than 80% of the school who completed the journey, the group collectively reading 700,000 pages. All this is made possible by two dozen parent volunteers and support from the Parents Association. It's a model of innovative, community-centered education, and it is one of the gems of the Portsmouth School Department.

When reporters caught up with Carpender in the hallway, he was firm on the numbers. "75K is not 31K," he reiterated. Without the tech warrant money, they would not be able to purchase the updated textbooks for the Math program or even cover the software licensing for the coming year. Taken together, those are over $200K of purchasing that the $31K of debt service provides. Finding the $31 might be possible, but there was just not enough to keep Prudence open.

That shortfall was baked into the budget by the Caruolo process, and the difference between the proposed stipulated agreement and the eventual Superior Court judgement. "That's where we went downhill," said Carpender. "Prudence wouldn't be closed if we hadn't gone to trial."

Meanwhile, the Council was still chewing on the rest of the budget. The next contentious item was solid waste, specifically, the proposal to charge residents who wished to use the transfer station. "We're a rarity in not charging a fee," Town Admin Bob Driscoll pointed out. "This year, we're funding the $590K in the tax rate."

"It's really another form of taxation," whined Tailgunner Gleason.

"It isn't, to be honest," said Driscoll. "A user fee is a cost for a service we don't have to provide." He pointed out that the Town is not legally required to collect trash, and that citizens would be paying $1.8M collectively for that service, so the user fee was a public good.

The initial motion for the fee failed, as did a quite logical move by Len Katzman to simply close the transfer station if they weren't going to fund it. Then Gleason moved to the second alternative, which involved lower user fees with the town picking up $200K.

"Look at the school budget and find $200K there," said Gleason. "Dr. Lusi had a plan, that she said would have saved between $150-200K, she found, to share services at the elementary level."

Now the last part of the sentence above is critical. Go watch the tape. What she was referring to was an early school budget proposal that involved cutting a nurse, counselor, and librarian and having the remaining staff move from school to school on a part-time basis. Cut mental health, put medically fragile students at risk, and close the libraries part of the week. I can't imagine that these are the priorities President Canario suggested that need to be put in place.

When public comment was permitted, I asked Councilor Gleason to square this with her stated position (during the discussion of the lifeguards at Sandy Point) that public safety should be of utmost concern. And she called me over, at the end of the meeting, and emphatically denied that these were the cuts she was referring to. She claimed not to have any specific reductions in mind, only that Lusi had mentioned those numbers. But unless something convenient happens to the tape from this evening, you will hear her say "share services at the elementary level."

I certainly got very upset over nothing, because this alternative didn't pass, and the Council ended up reconsidering the original $100 sticker plan.

Next, the Council moved on to their "provisional" budget, the version which will go to the public next month for hearings. But first, they took public comment. I wish someone from the School Committee had been there, but I got up and said my piece to Gleason. Larry rose to yammer about the State's financial predicament, flat funding to towns, and warning against "shifting the loss of revenue to taxpayers" and "driving up the cost of government" The town needed to "rank basic functions by order of priority." Which, I have to point out, was exactly what Bob Driscoll's budget did, but Fitzmorris had in mind "restructuring the Town's government." It gives me cold fucking sweats to imagine for even ten seconds what living in Larry's Bargain Basement Government would be like. I'm pretty sure it's not a place Jefferson would be comfortable, the PCC's masthead notwithstanding.

Moving on.

The one good piece of news, going into the provisional budget, was that all the tweaking had only pushed the number $49,469 over the cap. And there was, believe it or not, a magic bullet. The Town had been trying to phase out the warrant items on their side — and yes, that means borrowing — but by continuing for one more year, they could cover the $49K and bring the budget back in under the cap.

Canario seemed relieved. "We could save a whole lot of time and do a whole lot of good."

But Jim Seveney wanted to at least explore the other option: exceeding the cap. "Look at what we've done," he said. "We've closed a school. Decimated civic support. Eroded basic services. We're in a hole, and the hole was created by the Financial Town Meeting. The schools made some of that back through the courts, but we have no recourse. I move to add an additional $630K and move back through the budget and provide all the services we historically have."

Gleason was up in arms immediately. "This is the year the council needs to make a decision," she said, urging them to abide by Paiva-Weed. "We need to listen to the State."

Read that last sentence again, and marvel at how the PCC and their apologists can defend the Town Charter when it suits their purposes, yet still cower conveniently before the almighty General Assembly. For people who want to starve the beast and gut local government, what kind of a talking point is "We need to listen to the State?" Can she really utter that sentence with no cognitive dissonance?

McIntyre wasn't going along with exceeding the cap either. He wasn't sure that the money would stay in the general fund and not "go to the schools." And he singled out East Bay Community Action for harsh criticism: "They're double dipping on taxpayers money. Take a look at the salaries they get."

Council President Canario wasn't in favor of the approach either. "At the tent meeting there was a vote taken, and that's what we have to abide by." The motion to exceed the cap failed.

The Council moved in the direction of extending the warrants, which would cover the $49K and put some money back in the depleted general fund. But wait, it ain't over until the guy from Anthony House comes back to ask for more money for senior bus trips.

Yes, as unbelievable is it might seem, he came back. He pointed out that the residents of Anthony House were taxpayers — hear this well, Councilors, they contributed some $51K to the town coffers — and they wanted to get some back.

And even more incredibly, Gleason tried to oblige. She actually made a motion that the Council cut all funding for East Bay Community Action and Newport Community Mental Health, "because they receive Federal funds," and give it to the seniors for their bus trip.

Yes, that's right. Cut all funding for the most challenged in our communities so that a bunch of seniors can go on a bus trip to Maine.

Let me be incredibly blunt. My mother was a low-income senior. In the years before she died, my wife and I had to support her to the tune thousands of dollars a year. We kept her out of state care, and I don't begrudge one penny that we owe because of it. I know there are a lot of other sandwich-generation folks in the same boat, paying for kids and parents. Did I expect the State to pick up her Medicare and Medicaid expenses? Absolutely. Did I expect to see taxpayer dollars go to put her on a bus trip to Maine? No. That is just not something I believe the government should provide.

Ah, yeah, that's just me, political naif looking for consistency and fairness, when this year, the budget process has had neither. Not through any fault of the Council, but there are external forces at work. I hope Senator Paiva-Weed is aware of the heartrending impact her well-intentioned legislation is causing.

Mercifully, there was no second for Gleason's amendment, so the Anthony House will have to live with the same token $500 given to the far less worthy folks like the Samaritans, Newport County Women's Resource Center, Red Cross, and Visiting Nurse Service.

With a final vote, the Council provisionally approved a budget of $52,525,178, at the levy cap of 5.25%, which would be an actual property tax rate increase of 2.19%.