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Wilton Board of Selectpersons recommends status quo budget for RSU 9

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The Wilton Selectboard, at a previous meeting.

WILTON – The Board of Selectpersons voted unanimously to suggest a status quo budget to Regional School Unit 9 during their virtual meeting Tuesday evening, without new increases.

“In these times, what I’m seeing out there when delivering meals, we’re in a bad space,” Selectperson Tom Saviello said. “We need to be very careful about any potential increases.”

Saviello suggested a letter be sent to the school board and Superintendent Tina Meserve stating that they recommend keeping the budget at status quo. They would support any negotiated contractual wage increases or unavoidable increases due to safety or regulatory requirements, but would discourage any non-essential increases.

“Any budget should be held. We know there’s going to be financial impact. State revenues are projected to be down 20 percent over the next year. That’s going to affect town budgets as well as school budgets. It would be unreasonable to move forward for any of us,” Selectperson David Leavitt said.

In other business, final cleanup of the former Foster Mill site is underway. Town Manager Rhonda Irish said Ransom Consulting provided two quotes for the removal of piers in Wilson Stream, one set at $151,895 would include a “saw line at the waterline” and another quote at $84,895 would not include the saw line.

At the board’s request, Irish will gather more information regarding if both of those projects would get approval from the Department of Environmental Protection. Irish will also be looking further into the details of what “saw line at the waterline” entails.

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26 Comments

  1. i think the town better take a look at where the water is going and look at the bank behind those piers as its about to cave in if you dont remove the debris piled up along those piers.if the bank lets go your looking at alot bigger picture .

  2. I don’t see why it costs so much. Kids can eat a peanut butter sandwich and jail birds can go to work

  3. Thanks for the reasonable request put forth in this letter to RSU9. I hope this doesn’t fall on deaf ears. I wonder if your school board members agree with this. I would hope so.

  4. Wilton is certainly on the right track, but because the Admin seems to be deaf to any begging and pleading to reduce the budget, there will be nothing done.
    It seems RSU9 thinks the “uneducated” people have no idea of how things work, so they just twist the truth to suit their situation. Then they get all upset because there are some of us who know better. And question their methods.
    I understand “the Board” wonders why people get upset with them. Really? Truth seems to be missing, and misrepresentation rampant.
    Maybe it’s time to round up the troops again. If RSU9 continues, once the budget reaches $40 Million, there will be a revolt.

  5. Now, if the other nine selectboards have the courage to follow Wilton’s lead maybe something will be accomplished for once in the controlling of “the runaway budget train of RSU 9.” People will need to realize that this isn’t about hurting or taking away the education of our youth.THE virus has done that.We are seeing alternative ways to teach.Yep,to meet contractual obligations some programs and personnel may have to be cut. Sad. but these are sad times. People are going to struggle emotionally and financially for some time.Of particular interest to all will be the reaction and action of the school board and administration of RSU 9. Hopefully, they will realize that they should be a part of this community and not apart from it!

  6. how is there not money left over from last years budget after closing school in March?

  7. Thank you Wilton select board for being the voice of reason. I hope other towns follow suit

  8. Nancy the last budget meeting via zoom there was a few people on the board very concerned with any extra spending this coming year. Tune in on the 28th when the budget is presented to the rest of the board. Thanks to the Wilton select board seeing the big picture.

  9. As a resident of RSU 9 speaking for myself, now is the time to be frugal. I do not support cutting programs and materials for students in order to create jobs. Layoffs may be a distinct possibility this year. Many people have been laid off, many may not have a job to go back to, and with the mill explosion in Jay not to mention the situation with the virus, money is going to be tight for everyone. As I see it, even if everyone was to go back to work in July, it would take a year to fully recover economically. Thank you Wilton Board Of Selectmen for being transparent in your thinking.

  10. School did not close. It moved to remote instruction. Meal services continued and instruction and outreach continued and will continue until the end of the school year.

  11. I would like to thank Craig Stickney for sharing his thoughts. I would encourage other board members to let us know thier thoughts as well. After all, you are our voice pertaining to school matters so it would be nice to hear from you all.

  12. I will also give my personal opinion on the budget. I myself have concerns with adding any increases to the budget in these trying times. Our communities are all in the same boat as is our economy. I have spoken with the selectmen in my small town and ask them to write a letter as the Wilton people have. My family is loosing two months of income because of this “virus” and I wouldn’t expect any tax payers to foot a larger bill when we can make adjustments to make this easier on everyone. Here is a link to explain the impact of “coronavirus” on funding. This is going to be a problem nation wide not just at the state and local levels. https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2020/04/13/how-will-coronavirus-affect-school-spending-9.html?cmp=eml-enl-eu-news1&M=59411764&U=2585818&UUID=e5efa257d3e25631aa1af73fc6134e47&intc=eml-contshr-shr-desk

  13. The RSU 9 budget has always been bloated to the point the elderly can’t afford it on a fixed income. Thank you Craig and Jesse you 2 are the only ones that have any sense on the school board, the rest just rubber stamp everything that Tina puts forth. Time for fiscal responsibility on that board and it’s long overdue.

  14. Wilton board has done a good deed with this. Now is the time for the other towns in the district to step up and follow Wilton’s lead.

  15. Thank you Jesse Sillanpaa for sharing the link. Some very informative reading
    and still a lot of uncertainty awaits us. Hopefully their will be new legislation enacted to put some sort of pay freeze on contracted salaries. I would hope also that no new positions be created ( rumor of an assistant superintendent at $60,000 ) until the economy recovers. And I would hope that all select boards in the district would think the same as Wilton and send letters also.

  16. There should be a surplus from the 2019-2020 school budget. Assuming that all staff continued to be paid after moving instructions to remote, there are a lot of expenses that should have decreased from expected spending:

    Electric usage at all of the schools. With staff only there to prepare meals. All of the class rooms must have been left with the lights off. With no computers running (or very few) no late night programs and no evening athletic lighting, there should be a decrease in the light bill. If there is not a decrease, CMP is stealing from our district.

    Reduced heating bills. The schools do not need to be heated to 70 or 72 degrees. Those schools should have the temp set at 62 and left there. Very few doors opening and closing should seriously reduce the cost of heating.

    Reduced gasoline and maintenance bills for busses. Even if busses are used to get meals to students, there very few miles being driven compared to budgeted amounts. With the busses being parked for the most part we can expect to see these bills reduced.

    Supplies to clean and maintain the buildings. With nearly empty buildings, and almost no foot traffic to dirty floors, the cleaning supplies should be significantly reduced. These items may be a small percentage of the budget, but their should be a savings by not having to be purchased for 3 and a half months.

    Reduced water usage. The water bills for the schools should be much lower because of the reduced number of people using the bathrooms. Even schools that have wells should see savings here with the water pumps running less frequently.

    I don’t know how these expenditures are budgeted, but we should see line item reductions to next year’s budget for each of these categories. If we do not see this we need to start asking the administration and our School Committee Directors where this money went. If the contracts we sign for these budget items requires spending the same amount whether or not the items were used, we need new Directors and new administration who know how to negotiate contracts that make sense.

  17. Let’s not be too harsh on the school board. Some of the members who rubber stamped, believed everything they were told, refused any public interference, are gone. Replaced by more reasonable, understanding and questioning individuals gives hope to better management of taxpayers’ dollars AND a return to proven educational practices. I should hope the time of not teaching cursive writing, spelling, trad. math,and omitting THE PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE and THE LORD’S PRAYER will become part of our past. The holdovers on the board may come to their senses,or soon be gone.I firmly believe that if teachers were allowed to teach and do what they are trained to do, using their own common sense and techniques, everyone would be better off, especially the students! I hope the school board does right this time around. Thank you Craig and Jesse for your input and please know the public is with you.

  18. During these incredibly mind boggling times, living through a PANDEMIC, who would have thought in our life time (at 54) we would see something like this. ALL and i mean ALL ,of our local towns and schools , not just farmington, must show restraints in spending , and borrowing and cut taxes, not raise them on people who are out of work till who knows when. People are stressed to the max trying to live and get by. Not only Worried about loosing their incomes, But EVERYTHING they’ve worked for. Their houses, vehicles, businesses, feeding their familys or paying property taxes. Will the town or bank take their house? Our towns and schools must cut expenses and paycuts should be considered . If WE’RE really all in this together, than we should all do what we can to help our neighbors and family.

  19. Maybe not the exact place for it, but I’m in favor of the status quo on RSU 9 tax increases. I still still haven’t figured out why we spent so much money on two giant steel lawn ornaments at the high school. I thought they were supposed to do something to help the taxpayers save money..

  20. @ Henry
    You asked about Witon’s board members feelings. They haven’t responded publicaly in support of their select board

  21. To Momof2:
    I know initially at the beginning of the year, the Superintendant made all kinds of excuses why none of the meetings were being streamed. I finally gave up the fight. I decided the District is going to do EXACTLY what the District wants to do, to &%#$ with the taxpayers. And oh, the excuses.
    I know there’s a ZOOM sharing thing, but I have never played with it. I don’t know how to access it. Is that something you can share? There are some of us who would be delighted to listen in, assuming they don’t turn the volume down so we can’t hear anything. (Oh, yes…that’s been tried)
    I feel bad for the teachers trying to teach using computers. There’s been alot on the news about how the distancing is impacting learning.
    To: TJ Greaton.
    You’ve nailed expenses. And someone is going to come to the forefront with their suitcase full of misrepresentations on why the expenses did not decrease. the thing that bothers me is that our District has
    a total light bill of a 1/2 Million dollars ($500,000+) budgeted. And absolutely the bills should have decreased. It will be interesting to see just how much will be disclosed.

  22. Nancy it is an app on your phone or you can download it on your computer. The link (invite to the meeting) will be on the district website home page. The screen will have directions on how to connect audio and video.

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