Thursday, June 16, 2011
TC Approves Special Education Reimbursement
At the Tuesday, June 14, 2011 Town Council Meeting, there was unanimous approval of the resolution to appropriate the Special Education funds to the Board of Education Budget. This item had been delayed a month because of the need to call for a Public Hearing prior to Town Council action. The hearing was held on the same evening and there was no public comment at that time.
Another factor in the delay was making certain that the funds were actually received from Hartford.
I'd like to thank the Town Council for bringing this issue to closure at least for the current fiscal budget.
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6 comments:
Was there any discussion -- public or private -- regarding how funding fluctuations will be handled in the future? Going forward will this end-of-year transfer (whether it's Town to BOE or BOE to Town) always occur?
If this is a legal issue, then presumably that would always need to happen. Right?
Tim,
It's only an issue if the special account is under budgeted in the ED budget cycle. This was the case this year hence the requirement to increase the budget by the shortfall (which has been promised to be fully funded by the state and most of the funding has been received). The council action this week increased the town's budget by the amount being spent on the special ed outplacements dictated by the state.
In the reverse if the BOE over estimates the cost any excess technically is a surplus that goes into the general fund, unassigned until the following budget year. This is where the conversation got a little twisted and several people stated the TC was keeping BOE funds. All revenues flow into and out of Town Hall to the budgets they belong to.
This year was hopefully the extreme. It has never been a big concern expresses by the education dept. The other point to be made is that the increase in the Ed budget is 1.2 million not the $927,000 adopted last April.
Tim Slocum
"This year was hopefully the extreme. It has never been a big concern expresses by the education dept. The other point to be made is that the increase in the Ed budget is 1.2 million not the $927,000 adopted last April.
Tim Slocum"
True Tim and I hope we don't have a repeat. But my pessimistic side tells me that is Hartford made last minute placements in our district last year...we should expect more of the same this year. I anticipate that the reimbursement will continue to shrink from Hartford over time.
Thanks Tim. Based on what you wrote then, I'm assuming that most elected officials seem to agree that this is not a legal question... it's a public policy question.
I think that's important if this comes up again in the future.
Also, I see Malloy plans to cut Cheshire's funding by $225,000. All things considered, that's not really that bad. Though Malloy said he expects to whack municipal aid a lot more next year.
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