Annual Budget Season = War of Words

The town’s annual budget got underway in earnest a little more than a couple weeks ago when officials unveiled a combined $357 million proposal for the town, Board of Education and Capital Improvement Program Projects.

Municipal and education officials say salaries and benefits mandated by union contracts account for the majority of the budgets.

If the proposed 2011-12 plans are kept intact  - without any cuts made – by both the Board of Estimate and Taxation (which is holding public hearings through the month) and the 230-member Representative Town Meeting, the town’s tax rate of 8.596 mills per $1,000 of assessment, will increase by about 2.87 percent, according First Selectman Peter Tesei.

Whether that will occur remains to be seen – the BET won’t make its final budget recommendation to the RTM until March 31. The RTM must vote on the budget at its May 9 meeting so the tax rate can be set May 16 by the BET.

Historically, every budget cycle at every governmental level provides a foundation for discussing the merits of spending, usually with some contentious debate. And Greenwich isn’t immune from the verbal sparring.

This budget season the issues that have drawn passionate public comments include whether to fund the Greenwich High School auditorium and music classroom space project; raze and build a new Central Fire Station; replace lockers at Central Middle School and replace the leaking room of the Eastern Greenwich Civic Center, among others.

Before the budget season even began, the District 7 delegation of the RTM presented its own historical analysis of the town’s budget process showing how the town’s spending plan and tax rates have increased from 1970 to 2010 to the full RTM in September. The report – which calculated all dollar figures in current 2010 values – indicated the town and Board of Education staffing levels continued to increase while the student population decreased and the resident population minimally increased.

That report was the basis for a Sense of the Meeting Resolution vote in October in which the RTM urged the Board of Selectmen and BET to work “for a reduction in the rate of the increase of the town budget.”

Last week Tesei issued his own historical budget analysis, taking issue with the numbers cited in the District 7 report. His report – which took three town employees three months to compile – compared dollar estimates in period values, rather than in 2010 dollars.

“I want this to be a basis for conversation between the RTM and BET,” Tesei said. “I don’t think this is an issue with the RTM. We need to take into consideration, all points of view so that you know what’s driving up the costs of service.”

Well, the conversation with RTM reached a crescendo Tuesday when members of the RTM’s District 7 delegation held a press conference where they defended their analysis of budget history. Lead by District 7 Chair Valerie Stauffer, accusations were lobbed in a rebuttal of the analysis by Tesei and his staff, which Stauffer said “seems to be an attack on the validity of the report …’’ that is a “politically motivated ambush” by those “with a vested interest in the status quo.”

The members also demanded that Tesei retract his report and re-issue it with corrections.

In an e-mail Tuesday afternoon, Tesei said certain corrections including the reference to the vote tally at the October RTM meeting, would be noted and that “the report we issued stands on its merits.”

Tesei also said, “The District 7 report serves as a formal means to further document the changes in our Town's service delivery over this 40-year period and provide greater background as to what influenced these changes.”

In the meantime, for taxpayers who want to keep tally of the back-and-forth of words and statistics cited by both sides, the Tesei report can be found on the town's website (http://www.greenwichct.org/Home/default.asp) and the District 7 report and rebuttal can be found on the district's website http://www.rtmdistrict7.org/.