If you're attending tonight's budget hearing, you may want to read through a couple of documents that were e-mailed around. Supt. Susan Lusi sent out a fact sheet on the FY 2011 budget request, and Save Our Schools distributed FAQs on Portsmouth schools. BTW, could it be purely coincidence that today is Bastille Day?

Support our schools.

The Portsmouth Town Council will be taking public input (finally!) tonight on the proposed 2011 budget, and its $1.2M cut to the school department. The meeting will be in the Portsmouth Middle School at 7pm, and you'll want to get there early. The folks from Save Our Schools will be outside with fliers, so please stop by and say hello.

I would like to encourage everyone who feels comfortable to plan on saying a few words. It is expected that the Council will limit public comments, so you might want to jot down a few notes and expect to only have two or three minutes to speak. It's really important that the Council hear from all the folks who would be affected by this decision.

The School Committee came in with a reasonable budget, a 2.5% increase, and they delivered it under the tax cap. It was funding cuts by the state that put us in this position, and the S3050 tax law explicitly allows towns to exceed the cap to make up for this kind of loss in revenue.

The Council can do the right thing tonight: they can vote to fund the schools and exceed the tax cap — they already did it once, in the provisional budget, but now it would take a supermajority, or 6 out of the 7 Councilors. We can let them know that we would support them if they the right thing.

Hope to see you tonight.

According to a listserv e-mail from Portsmouth Supt. Susan Lusi today, the district has learned that the quirk of the S3050 legislation under which the Town Council restored half of the money cut from the schools has been changed in the closing days of the general assembly session. The 4-to-3 vote on June 23 would have exceeded the cap by $570K in order to restore half of the $1.2M cut from the 2011 school budget.

Lusi said, "We learned earlier this week that the loophole in the Senate 3050 legislation that would have allowed our Town Council to override the budget cap with a simple, rather than a super, majority was closed in this last legislative session with the passage of H7893 sub A – a 79 page piece of legislation that cleaned up housekeeping items in numerous pieces of legislation. This means that a supermajority of the Town Council would need to approve exceeding the tax cap."

As originally passed, S3050 technically required a supermajority (for our Town Council, 6 out of 7 votes) in the first year, 2007. The text of the bill, H7893a, is online, but you'll need to scroll down to line 64-20 to find the amended passage. It now clearly includes all years in the requirement for a supermajority, voiding last month's simple majority vote. Unless the Council makes further changes, this would mean that the original $1.2M cut to level fund the schools would be back on the table.

Lusi reminding residents of the importance of following the budget process and outlined the key upcoming meetings.

Please keep the following dates on your calendars:

7/12 – School Committee meeting (tentative, we are still polling the Committee on this date);

7/14 – Public hearing on the budget, Portsmouth Middle School Little Theater, 7 PM;

7/19 – Special Council meeting to consider the public comment and decide on any budget changes (tentative, under consideration by the Council);

7/26 – Budget adoption by the Council.
— e-mail from Supt. Lusi

Update: An anonymous reader offered a technical correction which I'm passing along: Since the modification to S3050 took effect after the Council's vote, their action would have been legal under the existing statute and would not have been voided. However, since this was just a provisional budget, the point is moot; any vote to exceed the cap on the final budget will need a supermajority.

In an occasionally heated 4-hour meeting tonight, the Portsmouth Town Council discovered that that because of a problem with the language of the state law, they could exceed the S3050 tax cap with a simple majority. And they did, provisionally voting 4-3 to exceed the cap by $568,746, restoring half the funding cut from the schools.

While this might sound like good news, remember that this is just a provisional budget, that the Superintendent was not certain even a cut of this size was manageable, and the Council has two more opportunities (the public hearing and the adoption of the ordinance) to change their mind.

I'm not actually certain that everyone on the Council acknowledged and agrees that they voted to exceed the cap. It was that kind of meeting.

Will write up the rest tomorrow, but here's the nut of the legal argument, which was pronounced sound by the Town Solicitor and, according to finance director Dave Faucher, by the Dept. of Revenue.

If you read the statute as enacted, you'll notice that it states plainly that the supermajority specifically applies to subsection (a):

§ 44-5-2 (e) Any levy pursuant to subsection (d) of this section in excess of the percentage increase specified in subsection (a) of this section shall be approved by the affirmative vote of at least four-fifths (4/5) of the full membership of the governing body of the city or town or in the case of a city or town having a financial town meeting, the majority of the electors present and voting at the town financial meeting shall also approve the excess levy.

Subsection (a) defines legal increases in the levy for all years "(a) Through
and including its fiscal year 2007." In the actual text of the law, maximum
increases for the years 2008-2013 are contained in subsection (b).

So, technically, according to the principles of "statutory construction," you have to read the law as not requiring a supermajority after 2007. I'd like to thank former Town Councilor Len Katzman for pointing this out and explaining it to me.

I did some research on the general assembly bill history site, and it appears that the line in question was inserted in markup -- see line 3-9 in the original bill.

It appears legislators were removing a reference to a specific value (5.5%) and they seem to have overlooked the reference to section a, which in *this* version still contained the text prescribing maximums for all years.

However, in the sub-a version of the bill which proceeded to the floor and which was subsequently enacted, the years 2008-2013 have been broken out and moved to section b, but nobody appears to have cross-checked for the later reference. So while people assumed that the law required a supermajority, that's just NOT WHAT THE WORDS SAY, Larry.

So hey, any other towns out there need to exceed the cap but only have four votes? Enjoy.

Update: Minor change to language to sharpen the point of the argument.

Portsmouth Town Councilor Dennis Canario, in an e-mail sent to supporters this morning, said that constituents had expressed support for his motion to exceed the cap in order to fund the schools, and he suggested passing along information about the budget referendum process:

After last night's meeting, I was flooded with folks who supported my efforts. I do have information that needs to be distributed as a result of inquires I have received.

Our residents do have a way to fight back! Please get the word out that they will have 14 days from the date of the adopted budget to obtain 10% of the registered voters signatures (approx 1400 signatures) to put the question on the ballot to approve the proper funding needed for the town. It is important that people know they have this avenue at their disposal.

Remember now, we are talking 10 bucks a month to save the town!
— Canario e-mail

For background, the budget referendum is the process put in place by Portsmouth voters in 2007 to replace the Tent Meeting. By collecting the appropriate number of signatures on a properly worded question, a group can require the town to schedule a special election to increase or decrease the tax levy. The process was instituted to address issues with the Tent Meeting: it provides universal access through regular polling equipment and all-day voting, and includes absentee ballots.

Reached for comment by e-mail, Canario added some additional thoughts:

"I would just add that it's not just the schools that is going to feel the brunt. Services the town provides will most likely be cut as well. It is going to be interesting now to see how the prevailing side will cut the budget without affecting crucial services.

People must understand that neither I nor anyone else wants to raise taxes (especially on an election year), but we have an obligation to ALL residents to provide sufficient and proper services without compromising health, safety, and basic education.

I made a pledge back in the Caruolo days that whatever the outcome of the independent audit, I would follow its recommendations. I am keeping my promise. Everyone who knows me knows I am a man of my word, and one who truly loves the town.

We are talking 10 dollars a month on the average home. That seems to be a small price to pay to keep Portsmouth the most wonderful place to live."

Full disclosure: Obviously, I think Dennis Canario did the right thing last night, and I thank him for his motion, and Jim Seveney for his vote. I am a supporter of the schools, and I would encourage anyone interested in becoming involved in this process to visit the Save Our Schools web site and the Save the Arts and Sports in Portsmouth on Facebook. I'll certainly post anything I hear.

Council (foreground) and School Committee in the PHS Gym.

The longest day of the year felt even longer tonight, as 200 Portsmouth citizens sweltered in the bleachers in the PHS gym watching the Town Council vote by a 5-2 margin to not exceed the state tax cap, effectively level funding the schools for next year. The split was along party lines, with Democrats Dennis Canario and Jim Seveney supporting the request to exceed the cap and fund the schools and "no" votes from Republicans Peter McIntyre, Huck Little, Keith Hamilton, and Jeff Plumb joined by Independent Karen Gleason.

It was a bitter, sweaty end to a meeting which had begun with some promise. School Committee chair Dick Carpender, in his opening statement, said that they had been able to identify $350K in possible cuts, done "in such a way as to not impact the basic education plan or affect athletics, music, art, or extracurriculars." Carpender noted that on top of the existing gap in the budget of $140K, this really amounted to a $492K cut to the budget.

And on the Town side, administrator Bob Driscoll reported that they had been able to shave an additional $207K. But all the effort on both sides had still failed to bring the total budget number below the S3050 tax cap. Even with the best efforts on both sides, the budget remained stubbornly $1M above the amount the town is allowed to levy in taxes next year.

There was some talk about the car tax, and about tax rates. Town administration recommended a scheme that would provide a $3K exemption on car value, but it was, in Driscoll's words, "a sideshow" since it still counted toward the total tax levied. The bottom line is that the Council would need a 6/7 majority vote, and the impact on taxpayers would be in the vicinity of $0.29/thousand, or about $100/year on an average $350K house.

Jeff Plumb suggested dipping into the town's reserve fund, which was met with concern from Finance Director Dave Faucher because of the possible impact on the town's bond rating. Karen Gleason suggested cuts that should be "fair across the board. The schools are 70% of the budget." She also suggested "furloughs for every employee," including the schools.

Dennis Canario tried rational arguement. "People move to Portsmouth because of the services and the community," he said. "If we want to keep the services, then taxes are going to have to increase marginally. The state dropped the ball."

But Plumb played the recession card, arguing that it would hurt people too much for taxes "to go above and beyond at this time."

Jim Seveney also tried reason. "Are you interested in the value that Town and school services bring to the community?"

But Pete McIntyre knew what the problem was. "School budgets continue to go up because of the laws," he said, blaming the requirements and regulations of the state.

Administrator Bob Driscoll put it bluntly: "The real question is how much do you want to spend for the services you want to provide."

Dennis Canario made a motion to exceed the cap "in order to preserve services," and with the explicit goal "to keep the number as low as possible." There was loud, sustained applause from the bleachers.

But the applause was short-lived as the motion failed by 5-2.

Gleason warned the Council. "I'm hearing that next year is going to be really difficult," she said without identifying the source of her information, and arguing that the school committee should go "roll up their sleeves once again."

Canario expressed some frustration. "If the School Committee came back with another 300 or 700 it isn't going to be enough. You're telling them to level fund, and it's going to affect sports and music."

The public will finally get their opportunity to speak, said McIntyre, at the July 14 final budget hearing.

Editorial note: It is one thing to have lived through the last Tent Meeting where people fed up with their taxes made arbitrary decisions based on their wallets. It is quite another to see a majority of the elected Town Council refuse to accept reality — the reality of state budget cuts that turned a reasonable school budget into something that exceeded the cap, the reality that there is a clause in the tax cap that provides relief in precisely these situations, the reality that a $1.2M cut to the schools is simply not sustainable. I might not agree with the PCC, but at least I can understand where they're coming from. They're not elected to serve the common good of the town. The Council is. And a majority of this Council, tonight, definitively gave the back of their hand to the future of Portsmouth. In some ways, this hurts worse than the Tent Meeting.

In an e-mail distributed on the school listserv in advance of tonight's budget meeting with the Town Council, Portsmouth Superintendent Susan Lusi offered some amplification on the widely quoted talking point (at least if you're Jeff Plumb) regarding step increases.

Dear Honorable Members of the Portsmouth Town Council, Portsmouth School Committee, and Members of the Portsmouth Community,

When we talk about budget, as we will again tonight, I think we should collectively work very hard to make sure that the information we use is accurate at all times. To this end, I want to address some of the information distributed over the weekend regarding the Town Council’s vote on June 2 that proposed level funding the School Department’s budget, and in particular, what it conveys about the School Committee’s contract with our teachers.

The handout states, “Currently, Portsmouth teachers advancing from 8 years longevity to 9 years receive a 19% raise. Accordingly, all future pay checks for these employees will, for their lifetime, include this increase.”

This statement is true, but it’s only a part of the story. A high ranking RI Department of Education official made a similar statement about this large increase some months ago, in the context of funding expenditures, and I e-mailed him the following information along with the attached teacher step data from the Rhode Island Association of School Committees:

·Of the districts reporting, Portsmouth’s relative ranking on salary steps ranges from dead last on Step 1 to 4th on Step 9.*

·Our tenth (and top) step ranks 12th in the state; goes to 15th when you take into account districts with a Step 11 and 16th when you take into account the district with a 12th step.

·We do have a large, percentage increase between steps 8 and 9. The large jump used to be between 9 and 10 but it moved to 8 to 9 through a series of negotiations which included 2 years with no COLAs and lengthening the school day by 30 minutes.

·Our salary scale may be atypical given this large increase, but if you are asking the “bang for your buck” question, I think our approach of keeping steps lower prior to year 9 and having a top step that is really at the middle of the pack, probably saves our community money relative to a number of others.

·In other words, the annual percentage increase for steps may be larger, but the total paid out in salary over the professional life of a teacher may be lower than that of many districts.

I spoke to the RIDE official by phone after sending this information, and he agreed that he should stop using our step increase as a negative financial example. Since that time, someone in my office called the communities listed on the attachment that had not reported, and we learned that our top step teachers are actually 18th out of 36.

It is very important to raise questions about contractual salaries and benefits, as well as other costs of running our public systems, but it is crucial that this be done fairly and with complete information, rather than characterizing an entire contract via one step increase. It is equally important to look at all contracts in context, not just teachers’.

The contracts of all municipalities are available at http://www.muni-info.ri.gov/municipal%20contracts/. There is also a link to School Department contracts on that page but I could not get it to work. Another website that features municipal and school department contracts is http://www.themoneytrail.org/track.php. Take a look for yourselves.

Regards,
Sue Lusi

*Portsmouth rankings on all steps are as follows of the 27 districts reporting:
Step 1 Last
Step 2 10th
Step 3 15th
Step 4 17th
Step 5 18th
Step 6 22nd
Step 7 21st
Step 8 23rd
Step 9 4th
Step 10 12th (goes to 15th when look @ Step 11 and 16th when go to step 12)

— Susan F. Lusi, Ph.D.
Superintendent
Portsmouth School Department

Download attachement Teacher Steps with Portsmouth Rankings" (Excel)

Before the meeting with the Town Council on the school budget this evening (now at the Portsmouth Middle School, 7pm) you may want to take a peek at some of the background material on the impact of the proposed $1.2M cut. The materials from last night's School Committee meeting have been posted on the district web site, and the this, for me, is one of the key grafs on the problem with the Council's approach. From the Budget Presentation page 9, "Constraints":

"The sheer magnitude of the cut: the proposed reduction is 3.5% from a budget that already has per pupil expenditures ranked 31st. out of 36 in the state, has one less school than last year, and two less schools than two years ago, has not raised the educational supplies and materials budget line in two years, and received salary concessions from all employees last fiscal year."

Read the whole presentation (PDF) here. You can read the rest of the materials from last night's meeting here.

At last night's budget session, the Portsmouth School Committee discussed a variety of possible cuts to achieve the Council's requested $1.2M level-funding, before voting, 5-1, to return with the proposed budget intact.

After discussing a page of possible cuts and fielding 32 written questions from committee member Cynthia Perrotti, Supt. Susan Lusi stood by the original budget. "My recommendation is to stick with the budget we proposed. It is a 3.5% increase, it is within the cap. I am not recommending anything on this sheet."

The vote was bipartisan, with elected Republican Mike Buddemeyer joining elected Democrats Dick Carpender, Sylvia Wedge, Marge Levesque, and Angela Volpicelli in supporting Supt. Susan Lusi's recommendation to maintain the budget. The lone 'no' vote was the member of the school commmittee appointed by the Town Council, Cynthia Perrotti. "I'm going to not support this motion, nor did I support the original budget," said Perrotti.

School Committee chair Dick Carpender acknowledged the difficult fiscal reality. "I do understand the dilemma that the Council is is, that we're all in," he said. "But over the next ten years, we're going to lose $2M [due to the new funding formula]. The right thing for the school committee is to not cut this budget any further."

And Carpender took issue with the positions expressed by Council member Jeff Plumb. "I have a real problem with the intent behind that reduction," said Carpender, going on to quote an e-mail sent by Plumb over the weekend. "He said in that letter that, 'If the School Committee commits to fundamental change in the Union contract, I will vote to give them what they need,' and 'Nothing threatens education in Portsmouth more than the union contract.'" Carpender argued that this showed the Council exceeding their authority, which he said is limited to approving or denying the bottom line. "The Council is stepping over the line trying to control a line item in the budget," Carpender said.

Parent Chris Carceller addressed the committee and supported their action, countering the assertions of a PCC member at the last meeting who argued that the committee needed to make 'courageous' cuts. "What 'courageous' is tonight is standing behind our administration and believing in what they say is necessary," said Carceller, "I don't think cutting into this budget is courageous."

The school committee will meet with the Town Council this evening, and the session has been moved to the Portsmouth Middle School auditorium to accomodate the anticipated attendance.

Update: Thanks to Terri Cortvriend who scanned in the one-pager of possible cuts and their consequences. Click image to embiggen.