Vacuuming up the leaves

Is there anything more ridiculous than the West Hartford Taxpayers Association?

It demands that we cut, cut, cut and then, when cuts are made, it screams NO! NOT THAT!

For Judy Aron, its vice president, to tell The Hartfor Courant that eliminating curbside leaf  vacuum truck pickup is “a direct hit on our senior citizens” is both silly and stupid.

To use it as justification for seeking another budget vote is so stunningly obtuse that I can’t believe even this group could make the argument.

First off, the vacuum pickup is a luxury that most towns don’t do. We’re constantly told by people like Aron that we can’t afford these extra anymore, but when one is cut, she howls. Give me a break.

Even more than that, though, is the simple reality that the service should be stopped. Why should the town go around sucking up leaves? It’s far better that they get bagged and hauled off instead of blowing all over the neighborhood, clogging up storm drains, and presenting potentially deadly piles for children to hide in IN THE STREET. Plus I won’t miss the whirring noise of the damn things on otherwise delightful autumn days.

Anyway, Judy, your credibility is shot now.

The town made a reasonable decision on how to save some money without hurting the community. It’s a harship for some, sure, though I don’t think the elderly are taking a bigger hit than anyone else on it. Perhaps it’s just that you want the cuts to hurt only the children?

 

The budget debacle

There’s something seriously wrong if taxpayers have gunned two straight budgets by wide margins.

So what is it?

One could argue that the problem is that town leaders are simply trying to spend more money than residents are willing to support. This clearly has some truth to it, but it’s simplistic.

Another alternative is that people are struggling financially and, given the choice, are going to try to lower what bills they can. Again, there’s truth in that. None of us want to pay more, particularly when the cost of everything seems to be rising a whole lot faster than paychecks.

But I think the real reason that the budgets are getting clobbered is that we generally don’t feel as if we are getting the information we need before we agree to pay so much more. Sure, the town puts budget information online, but it’s presented in a way that only an accountant could love. And nowhere do we get simple data on the questions people are always asking – how much do employees make? What kind of health care do they get and how much do they pay? What kind of pensions are we handing out and how much does that cost each year? And on the education side, we really want to see much more, because it does seem preposterous that the charges go up so much every year while student numbers stay relatively stable. Explain that to us, please, in painstaking detail.

I’m a supporter of the schools, a backer of the budget, a yes voter to my core. But I’m also confused and upset that my neighbors have so many questions and there are so few answers. Relying on us to trust our elected leaders obviously isn’t enough to get a spending plan passed.

Give us some help, town council members. Let’s delve into the details, school board members. Make it possible for those who want to see the required spending supported to sell skeptical friends, neighbors and others.

Judge says no to dogs

Walbridge Road dog lover Faith Kilburn, who has 21 Shih Tzu dogs in her home, lost her appeal of a town order requiring her to get rid of nearly all of them, according to a story in today’s Hartford Courant.

Kilburn has 20 days to appeal — which she’ll no doubt do — and then the town will start fining her for violating zoning laws. She’d have to pay $43 a day for the first five days, $103 a day for the next 10 days and $192 a day thereafter, the story said.

Now I know that Kilburn has her supporters, including many neighbors, but I stand firmly with the town in its stance that the law must be obeyed. It is quite reasonable to prohibit people in our town from having more than a few pets because we are fairly urban and there’s no room for hordes of animals. Plus, we all know most people with an excess of animals in a suburban setting are kooks.

All Kilburn has to do to keep her dogs is move somewhere they are allowed. It’s simple, really, but she refuses to face the dictates of the law.
 

Slashing services the only option

The choice that our town leaders face is clear: they can either slash education more deeply or they can dump long-established services that town residents value.

Today’s story in The Hartford Courant devotes too much space to debunking the misleading numbers used by the West Hartford Taxpayers Association — old news, guys! — and not enough to what’s in store next.

But we do learn from the story that “the council will have to look to eliminate or reduce things that are in the budget, such as town services. ‘This is not something you can address adequately by trimming,’ [Mayor Scott] Slifka said. ‘We’re looking at wholesale service reductions.’
“Officials said they are considering eliminating the town’s vacuum-truck leaf pick-up service and instead requesting that residents place bagged leaves at the curb for pickup.
“Officials expect to have suggested reductions by the end of the week, and the council expects to adopt a new budget at its next meeting on June 26.”

I’m fine with dropping the vacuum trucks. They make a heckuva racket anyway.

What else can we do to save money on the municipal side of the budget? The schools can’t take more cuts.

Blue Back Square cited as model for growth

 Blue Back Square now

Developer Richard Heapes was heaping it on in Maryland this week, according to a  story in The Gazette, which covers the DC suburbs.

Pushing for more developments like Blue Back Square, Heapes “pointed to a project his company, Street-Works, is building in West Hartford, Conn., as an example. West Hartford gave his company $50 million in bonds to do $200 million of construction for Blue Back Square, aimed at revitalizing the city’s center.”

“By working with city officials and community organizations, including a neighborhood church, an American Legion post and the merchants’ association, his company will turn that $50 million into $80 million worth of assets and amenities, Heapes said. The organizations got an expanded library, new church entrance and a small movie theater available for free to groups,” he told a planning board there, according to the paper.

Let’s hope he can keep bragging about Blue Back Square for the next couple of decades.

School board’s budget goals this year

Way back in January, the Board of Education approved its goals for this year’s budget:

The Budget Priorities are:

 1.      The budget will provide support for continued planning and implementation of the -2007-2011 four-year district goals as established by the Board.

2.      The budget will support student and teacher educational needs, growth in student enrollment and diversity of students, efforts to close the achievement gap, and safe and orderly schools.

3.      The budget will continue to maintain a balanced commitment to academics, arts, athletics, and student responsibility. 

4.      The budget will support rising costs of health benefits, energy, and educational supplies and materials. 5.      The budget will support the negotiated contracts with all bargaining units.     6.      The budget will identify and recommend long-term cost saving measures to minimize the budget increase.

 7.      The budget will provide support for the enhancement of programs, facilities and support staff at Smith and Charter Oak magnet schools.   

8.      The budget will identify efficiencies both short term and long term gained through the Education and Municipal facilities consolidation. 

It looks to me as if the proposed cuts now will undermine most of those priorities, particularly at Smith and Charter Oaks schools, and weaken any effort to close the achievement gap. 

 

Taking an ax to education

In the wake of the town council’s awful decision to slice $1.8 million from the proposed school budget, something has to give. Now we know what it might be, and it’s terrible.

The Board of Education has posted a list of potential cuts to reach the new budget goal that it never wanted. You can see the list in PDF form here.

Just scroll through the list and it will make your heart sink. Extending world language education down to kindergarten? Gone. Quest? Gone. Extra help for our most troubled schools? Gone.

They’re even eyeing a return to half-day kindergarten at Aiken, Bugbee, Duffy, Morley and Norfeldt — a policy reversal that flies in the face of every expert’s recommendation. Those same schools might also see class sizes rise by FOUR students apiece. That’s terrible, too, since smaller classes are key for getting results.

Go through the hit list yourself. Everyone will find different things that make them queasy. If this happens, it would be a giant step backward and a slap in the face of our hard-working students, who deserve better.

And what’s really worrisome is that even with all these cuts already looming, the West Hartford Taxpayers Association is pushing for a referendum because it wants MORE cuts. This is so ludicrous that I don’t know where to begin. What kind of town are we creating here? Our leaders need to do better, all of them.

Why don’t we have a skatepark?

This morning, I was sitting in my car and looking at the field beside Asylum that’s being transformed into more ballfields. It’s a good spot for some fields. I have no problem with them.

But it got me thinking about how decisions get made about what to fund and what to ignore.

I assume that Little League and other organized groups pushed for more fields because they’re needed. I’ll give them that. Politicians feel the pressure and respond, recognizing that many hundreds of votes could be lost or won by approving fields.

So how do you ever get a skatepark?

Skateboarders are numerous, but not organized. They have few adults who will lobby for them or help them raise money. They have nothing but a need.

The town, of course, brushed that need aside in favor of golf courses, ballfields and even a mini-golf course that it hopes to make money on (boy, I know I feel pretty good hearing that my town government is getting into the Putt-Putt business – maybe a town pawn shop is next?).

My concern, put a little more directly, is that politicians put our efforts and our money behind projects that clearly please voters, such as these ballfields. They don’t see — because there’s no organized way to make them see — that other projects, from skateparks to putting nets on the basketball courts at our schools, will also benefit a lot of people, maybe even people who need the help more.

I really think that one big test these days of whether a town government is looking after its residents is whether it has a decent skatepark or two for its young people to use.

I hope our town officials will think about the choices they’re making. 

Should we be mad about the town’s proposed budget?

An overview of the budget in today’s Hartford Courant provides a taste of the increasingly bitter debate about the spending plan town leaders are going to adopt next week. It’s must reading for anyone who cares.

Although it’s written backwards — correcting misinformation before telling the story itself (an obvious favor to town officials) — it’s still interesting.

Here are some choice points:

* “There’s so much animosity,” Republican council member Joseph Verrengia said. “I welcome a difference of opinion, as long as we have a normal conversation and stick to the issues. But unfortunately there are some who make it personal.”

*  “The council’s focus right now is to try to get this budget increase as low as possible. Whether we do it through forecasting additional revenue, or cutting spending, the delicate balance that the council has to be concerned with is continuing to provide the services that make our town so special,” Verrengia said.

“By having it both ways, it’s a clear indication to me that the taxpayers’ association is just bent on having a referendum,” he said. “Theresa [McGrath] has been advocating for this Proposition 2½, and now she’s changing the rules, late in the game.”

* Mayor Scott Slifka, a Democrat, said that the taxpayers’ group is exploiting the natural anxiety associated with the revaluation of property and that the group this year is an “active arm of the Republican town committee.” Previous leaders of the taxpayers’ group, he said, did not engage in personal attacks and did not align themselves with the minority party.

* West Hartford Taxpayers Association President Theresa McGrath said she has not changed her mind about her proposal. She said the taxpayers’ group is nonpartisan and includes Democrats, Republicans, Green Party members and unaffiliated voters. She also denied engaging in personal attacks.
“It’s disturbing to me that elected officials would try to steer the press to create this personal issue rather than actually addressing the real issue, which is our taxes,” she said.

Jack Darcey, chairman of the school board, agreed that the town’s first property revaluation since 1999, coupled with the annual budget anxiety, has increased the level of tension this budget season.
“It’s sent people into a dither,” Darcey said of the revaluation. “It’s made people very nervous and very, kind of angry and certainly ready to do battle because they feel that what they’re calculating for their taxes is something they cannot afford.”

 —-
In my view, the story is awfully scant on details. It looks like Slifka and Verrengia met with one of the two reporters together to go over “misinformation” — steering the story that way — rather than the reporters seeking out what’s going on and telling us the whole picture. After reading it, I still don’t know what even Slifka and Verrengia think the mill rate will be and how much more we can expect to pay.

Now, I’m willing to see a big increase because revaluation makes that a necessity, unfortunately. But let’s get real and TELL THE PEOPLE what to expect. We’re grownups. We can deal with the facts.

But this story is mostly just an insider shot at the taxpayers’ group, not a genuinely helpful piece of journalism.

Let’s integrate West Hartford’s schools

It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that something’s dreadfully wrong with the racial balance in West Hartford’s schools.

In a town where minorities make up a third of the student population, Smith School’s minority enrollment is just shy of two-thirds of the total and Charter Oak counts four out of five students as minorities.

Those numbers come despite the designation of both as magnet schools that should, in theory, attract students from across town. Smith is focused on science, math and technology while Charter Oak calls itself an “Academy of Global Studies.”

Clearly, the magnet isn’t proving particularly attractive.

According to Robert Frahm’s recent story in The Hartford Courant, West Hartford hopes to reverse the dwindling enrollment of white students in both elementary schools by hiring a magnet school liaison official who would publicize their existence so that both schools would have more appeal to parents.

That’s nice.

But after talking with some parents who would presumably be the targets for any public relations effort, I’d be stunned if the numbers change much.

The reality is that people generally want their young children to go to the same school that other kids in their neighborhoods attend (even in middle school many families oddly turn down the chance to go to Bristow because they’d rather stick with the neighborhood’s mainstream option). Public relations alone can’t make the difference.

School officials are dreaming – and wasting money – if they think otherwise.

And I’m pretty sure they’re not deluded enough to think that the problem is PR. They know the problem is rather more alarming: the neighborhoods around Smith and Charter Oak are becoming increasingly filled with minority families, many of them poorer and less educated than the norm in this town.

Hence, not only are Smith and Charter Oak racially imbalanced, they also have students that need more help than what’s generally true at Bugbee, Norfeldt, Morley, Aiken and the rest.

The truth is that the schools in West Hartford won’t be integrated until district lines are adjusted so that more white students are bused into Charter Oak and Smith and more minority children who currently attend those schools are sent to one of the other elementary schools.

This shifting can be done carefully to try to keep neighborhoods together as much as possible. I’ve looked at the current maps enough to see there are discreet areas that are probably mostly white that are bused now and could be sent a little further to Charter Oak or Smith.

Why don’t we do that?

Because there’s no political will to integrate our schools. It’s not a priority to almost anyone anymore.

But as someone who attended public schools that were quite mixed, I can say that it matters. It makes a difference in this world if you have genuine friends of other races, incomes and outlooks. It matters whether people are educated within an insular mindset or a broad one.

We can teach all the global studies we want. But what’s really needed is to live it, because the world our children are going to inherit is going to be ever further from the days of white privilege.

Even more than the issue of how to jigger the school makeups to make all of our schools more reflective of the community as a whole – and the world that’s coming – is the issue of why these two areas are so much more apt to have minority students than the town in general.

I recognize that housing prices play a role, of course, since if I were buying a house in West Hartford today, it would almost certainly be in one of those school districts unless it was falling apart.

But it’s not just costs. There’s something attractive about that area for minorities and perhaps repellent about other parts of town. We need to take a good, hard look at this whole issue.

West Hartford can’t afford to divide along racial lines. It will cripple us in the long run.

In the meantime, though, let’s at least get serious about integrating our schools fully.

White kids as well as black and Hispanic kids deserve to go to school to learn together, and from each other.

We need to do more to create the kind of world we should live in.