Video: Town, School Budgets Total $179 Million For Now

The numbers are in for the 2010-11 budget, but they’re not written in stone.

The next step for the $179.3 million school and municipal budgets, a 2.38 percent increase, is now in the hands of the Board of Finance. They have the power to cut that number despite the protests of people who presented the budgets on Wednesday evening.

“It is an austere budget…but I don’t think it’s a particularly responsible budget,” who crafted the $66 million municipal portion of the budget. “It once again gives shirt thrift to our infrastructure."

He said that road paving is falling behind and old equipment is not being replaced, and that’s directly attributable to the rising costs of pensions and health care. More than $10 million is planned for pension funds. His budget comes in with a 3.24 percent increase from the current fiscal year.

However, even with $750,000 to post-employment benefits and a recently approved $1.2 million infusion for post-employment benefits, the town is falling behind. Joseloff said he hopes to fund more of it later this year depending on how well the town’s revenues are doing.

One way to lessen the would be to negotiate with unions to get into less-costly retirement plans. Joseloff said he is doing that.

“I have been somewhat silent about exactly what we are doing to reduce pension and healthcare costs, and for good reason,” he said in his prepared statement to the Board of Finance. “Some of this is best done out of the spotlight. But I can assure you we are working hard on the issue.

The municipal and school budgets are worked on independently from each other, and also presented separately to the Board of Finance. The budget for the schools totals $112.7 million, a 2.31 percent increase from the current fiscal year. Approximately $14 million of that goes to long-term debt and aid to private schools for special education students.

Don O’Day, chairman of the Board of Education, echoed Joseloff’s belief that safety is a priority with the budget.

“Safety is also our first priority…and when you send your children to our schools they have to be safe. You have to be able to count on the fact that your children can arrive home safely,” said O’Day.

He said the other main goal of Westport schools is to ensure that a child is better equipped for college than anyone else.  O’Day and other administrators want to maintain that.

“Our budget proposal just does that but does it it a very fiscally responsible matter. It does it in a way that absolutely reduces the burden on our taxpayers to the lowest it could possibly be,” he said.

The Board of Finance kept conversations about the budgets brief. On March 22-24, they will look into the budgets at length as they weigh the possibility of cuts. They will come to a decision on April 6 on whether to leave the money as is or demand cuts on April 6.