Town, school officials meet with local legislators

By HANNAH CLARKIN
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

COVENTRY — We’re all going to get a haircut, was the message promulgated by State Legislators to the Coventry Town Council and School Committee at a workshop Monday night. The question, according to Sen. Lou Raptakis (D-Coventry, Warwick, West Warwick, East Greenwich), is, “how short?”

Given a state deficit that approaches $400 million this year and is due to come in at least at another $400 million going into the next fiscal year, budgetary cuts that impact cities and towns are unavoidable, said the legislators. If Governor Donald L. Carcieri’s supplemental budget isn’t passed as is, the money is going to have to come from somewhere else.

Raptakis, Sen. Leo Blais (R-21) and representatives Pat Serpa (D-27) and Scott Guthrie (D-28) were in attendance at the meeting, as well as the full council and school committee.

By not fixing this year’s mess, warned Blais, the deficit will become part of next year’s mess.

“Unemployment doesn’t help. There are more insurance claims when the economy is bad. So when you have less money to give you have to pay for more things. With the economy in the toilet and structural problems at the state level [we need to fix what we can this year].”

Town council members wanted more details on the status of the supplemental budget and whether or not it was likely to pass.

“It’s hard to get my head around these numbers,” said Councilman Frank Hyde. “It’s $850,000 in money that we’re not going to receive from the state?” That money would come from the general revenue fund, confirmed Raptakis.

The hearing process for the budget has been going on for weeks now. While she is not on the House Budget Committee, Serpa said that she has been attending every meeting and listening to the testimonies that come forth. “Every interest is a special interest,” she said. All day long the testimony is “don’t cut us, don’t cut us, don’t cut us.”

If the General Assmbly does strike some of the Governor’s cuts, said Councilman Glenford Shibley “then replace [his proposals] and save us some money.”

Rhode Island is in this mess, Council Vice-President Raymond Spear observed, because of a long history of “spending more than we’ve got,” he said. “Somewhere it has to stop.”

To the legislators Spear said, “Cuts are going to have to be made. But I don’t want to be put in the position of recommending that the taxpayers of Coventry spend X amount of money to bail out the state government.

“If you find [the cuts] recommended by the Governor unacceptable than please reach out and replace them,” Spear pleaded. Contractual bargaining tables and state mandates were the first two areas that Spear recommended as possible areas to save.

The General Assembly is working to bring mandate relief, Serpa said. Last year she served on a Mandate Study Commission, along with Coventry Superintendent Kenneth DiPietro. The commission has come up with several pieces of legislation to be introduced this year. Five such bills would eliminate school improvement teams, making them voluntary and not billable hours; eliminate the publication of school committee agendas in local newspapers, since the internet is also an effective way to post such information; make districts no longer responsible for funding professional development; allow school committees to vote to eliminate school bus monitors after holding a public hearing and deciding according to the will of the community; and limit transportation to charter schools on days when public schools are not in session.

“We all saw these cuts coming,” said Councilwoman Laura Flanagan. “My truest thought is that we’re in this situation because the government does not always operate efficiently.

What are the chances of the stimulus package being awarded to municipalities, Flanagan asked, but the state officials said that they have not heard any word about that.

Superintendent Kenneth DiPietro said he was specifically concerned with a clause in the supplemental budget that would put all districts in the state into the same health care collaborative.

Coventry, however, is currently part of the West Bay Collaborative, DiPietro said, and has spent the last ten years getting the cost of a family healthcare plan down to $14,000 per year. In the proposed state collaborative, the lowest it would cost is $17,000.

“Why would Coventry want to lose money [by joining the state collaborative] when we’re in a collaborative that works?”DiPietro asked.

The legislators said that they would look into adding an amendment to the budget that allows towns that have lowered their health care costs to opt out of the state plan as long as they can deliver a better price. “We shouldn’t punish a school department for being under [what the state can offer],” Blais said.

School Committee Chairwoman Katherine Patenaude cautioned the legislators against panic. “My biggest worry,” she said, “is that the longer it takes not to pass the supplemental budget, the bigger the deficit gets. But I also fear that this will pass just because of that panic and God knows what will happen next year.”

Another joint meeting is scheduled for Monday Feb. 23 to update the council when the supplemental budget has been finalized.