On Wednesday night, the Legislative Council heard from First Selectman Patricia Llodra and John Kortze that $240,000 of unassigned capital funding from a non-recurring account could be used to restore funds to the budget, as long as it was used for capital projects.
After a four and a half hour meeting, the Legislative Council voted to use $200,000 of those funds to add back into the Board of Education budget.
The Town budget would receive the remaining $40,000 after reducing their budget by $160,000.
According to Llodra, these particular funds would not result in an increase in taxes, and already exist in a fund.
Tax increases are now set at .91 percent
Po Murray describes the funds in a Patch comment, “John Kortze and Pat Llodra found $240,000 in the capital non recurring account which is not part of the general fund. This is the balance remaining after millions were moved into the Fund Balance (the rainy day fund) when the Fund Balance was created after we changed the Charter in 2008 for the town to manage its own surplus (the surplus $$ will no longer be used to offset the tax increase the following year).
They recommended to the LC that this money could be used to meet the needs of their divided electorate. The LC approved the use of $200K of this amount for capital items in the BOE budget to free up $200K for some other operating expenses. The LC also approved the use of $40,000 for town use however they reduced the town side of the budget by $160K to reduce taxation to about .9% (from 1.07%). Prior to the vote, the BOE presented a potential scenario of the cuts in services and programs to achieve the $1MM reduction.”
The meeting began with passionate comments from the majority of supporters calling for a reinstatement to the education budget, but a handful of residents did plead for a zero-increase to taxes.
Debby Leidlien, chairman of the Board of Education, handed out a breakdown of budget costs that could be reduced, and hopefully would not effect actual education, however, it seems certain that full day kindergarten will not happen with the 2012-2013 budget.
