Cumberland still needs school funds

CUMBERLAND - Town Council members are offering to release School Committee members from their uncomfortable pledge to forego $373,000 in town funding this year.

Instead of contributing to this fiscal year, Town Council member Jason Kirkpatrick suggests, he's asking school board members to help offset last year's expected deficit of $900,000 or more. The money would be applied to the budget year that ended on June 30.

But while Kirkpatrick and Finance Director Tom Bruce are saying a pre-audit adjustment to the last fiscal year is proper, the lawyer for the School Committee is strongly warning against it.

Joseph Rotella told three school board members this week that by agreeing to it they'd be breaking their oath to uphold the law

Kirkpatrick told The Breeze this week the proposal, which so far is represented only by line item changes in a budget printout, came about as a solution to school board reluctance to follow through on a June 1 pledge to supplement the town's current budget with $373,000 from accumulated surplus.

While town officials brace for nearly $1 million worth of red ink thanks to state aid and revenue losses in 2008-09, school officials figure they underspent the same year's budget by some $416,000.

Put them together, suggests Kirkpatrick, and the town's deficit is cut nearly in half and the town's books will be a little more palatable to investment rating services like Moody's.

Kirkpatrick and others are specifically asking for the same $373,000 that made up this current year's agreement.

They've scheduled a meeting of the council's Finance Committee to discuss it next Tuesday, Nov. 16, as well as the two public hearings required before shifting line items on Nov. 19 and 24.

It's all supposed to happen before the auditors finish up certifying both budgets.

While councilors are ready to go with this, school board members are hardly on board.

At a meeting Tuesday of the school board's Finance Committee, members and administrators reiterated for themselves a June 30 state Department of Education directive that school committees may not turn over surplus funds to municipalities.

Attorney Rotella told Finance Chairman Brian Kelly and members Ryan Pearson and Lisa Beaulieu, "Once funds are appropriated to a school department they belong to the school department and the town has no right to garner any of those funds. It is a violation of state law for a town to take those surplus funds back."

He called the language from state education attorney David Abbott "unambiguous."

"It's not weak language, it's very clear. School department funds are to be kept as school department funds."

Rotella acknowledged that on June 1, Superintendent Donna Morelle had agreed to give the town $373,000 toward this year's budget.

"I know we have a gentlemen's agreement with surplus funds, and a gentlemen's agreement is all well and good, but each of you takes an oath of office to uphold the law."

Kelly listed a series of objections to the plan. He said he worries the maneuver will set up a "use it or lose it" mentality among school leaders who might lose their motivation to conserve resources.

He also noted surplus funds give the school administration flexibility to cover unexpected expenditures that were not anticipated in this budget.

Said Kelly, "One of my key responsibilities, as I see it, as a member of this committee is to ensure that we have the resources available to provide the quality of education the students deserve and that parents expect. If we are going to continue to fail to provide these resources at the state and local level then you will be on a downward spiral, a spiral that will cost considerably more down the line to correct."

Superintendent Morelle was striking a cooperative tone at Tuesday's meeting, saying, "I've mentioned the need for face-to-face conversations before."

Just several years ago, she said, "the only time we were ever in front of the council was when we were asking for money. We've changed that and my fear is right now because of how difficult the situation is we're going to retreat back to that way of doing business. I feel the relationship-building was done for this kind of situation. If we step toward the dilemma, rather than away from it, and sit down face to face and share in an honest way, instead of dealing with it through the newspaper, we can resolve this.

"I implore the Finance Committee to take a leadership role."

Picking up on that theme, Beaulieu said everything the school board knows about town finances it learns from the newspaper. "What does motor vehicle phase-out have to do with Cumberland?" she asked referring to the reason the town is likely to lose $700,000 in fourth-quarter state reimbursement. She'd like to hear about the issue from town officials, she said.

Added Morelle, "We've practiced talking together. Just because the solution seems harder to find an answer for or appears there isn't one, doesn't mean there couldn't be is we sat down together. Or maybe this is an agree-to-disagree moment.

"But I don't want to be perceived that we have a wall up."

Kelly complained that he had contacted Council member Kirkpatrick about a meeting and hadn't been offered one.

On a motion from Beaulieu, Kelly agreed to approach Kirkpatrick again for a joint, publicly posted meeting.

Wrapped into this discussion about surplus funds is a state requirement that the town give the school at least as much in local support as the prior year.

The Kirkpatrick proposal would reduce the 2008-09 contribution to $35,802,474, still above the 2007-08 contribution of 35,758,031. That number includes the 317,000 the town took back in April after the state's first round of revenue sharing cuts.

However school board members fear the practice would set up a pattern of diminished town support for the future.

Contained in Tuesday's school discussion, too, were some words of resentment by administrators and school board members who, like most in Town Hall, are operating this year on the same town contribution as last year.

Said Morelle, "I honestly don't believe they would be making this move if we did not have a visible fund balance."

Agreed Rotella, "If the School Department were running a deficit, I would bet my first child we would not be looking at an ordinance trying to take $400,000 away."

He continued, "We scraped and saved and did everything in our power to save that money."

Business Manager Alex Prignano said that if the deal is done, the department will have no undesignated fund balance left, however it does have some money set aside for some specific projects.