RONALD RIX
WESTFIELD – Last night, the Westfield School District made a $57.6 million budget request for fiscal year 2015, an increase of over $2.1 million from the FY14 budget.
Ronald Rix, director of business and technical services for Westfield Public Schools, presented the FY15 budget yesterday evening, the first which he had built “from scratch”, to the Westfield School Committee.
Highlights in the district’s budget are fixed step increases for negotiated raises ($1,347,495), salary steps ($455,972), and salary longevity ($74,575).
Other fixed costs which saw increases included out-of-district vocational tuition ($64,198), leases for Juniper Park, Hampton Ponds, and district parking lots ($22,954), special education tuitions ($126,476), educational software ($83,290), transportation ($265,676), and utilities ($198,790).
Fixed cost items that saw decreases in the proposed budget were salary reductions such as severance, out-of-grade, and overtime pay ($247,663), legal contracted services ($20,000), rental/lease for copiers ($71,779), textbook costs ($139,996), building based budgets ($2,635), insurances/unemployment ($14,000), and other expenses dealing with software, stipends, vehicles, etc ($24,350).
MAYOR DANIEL M. KNAPIK
Rix noted that offsets of the FY15 budget totalled $1,949,228, very similar to the $1,976,878 shortfall between the district’s FY15 budget request of $57,628,862 and Westfield Mayor Daniel M. Knapik’s proposed district budget of $55,651,984.
Knapik, who also serves as School Committee Chairman, said that in the past he has guaranteed the city’s side of step increases in the school budget, but that he cannot do so this time around.
“We won’t finish loading up the rest of the city’s budget in the software until Friday,” he said. “But the number that I ran today – kind of ballpark, and all revenues aren’t adjusted to my satisfaction yet – was somewhere between $3 and $4 million short totally.”
DR. SUZANNE SCALLION
Knapik said that these figures aren’t set in stone and move around quite a bit when other factors are applied.
“This is not uncommon, but I’m not really in a great position to predict that we’re going to close $1.9 million or anywhere close to that,” he said.
Rix broke down the total offsets for the FY15 proposal, with $500,000 being offset through school choice, the district circuit breaker, and pre-paid tuitions, $200,000 coming through Public Law 94-142 (Education of all Handicapped Children), $140,168 coming from early childhood tuitions, $59,060 coming from cafeteria custodial services, and $50,000 from athletic fees.
“Last year, we took $800,000 out of school choice for transportation, and pretty much deleted that,” he said. “We’re projecting $500,000 to offset expenses within budget. Our Public Law 94-142 grant will go to offset some of the salaries of our staff.”
Following Rix’ presentation, conversation shifted to how the Committee can close a $1.9 million gap between the district’s request and the Mayor’s budget, which prompted a word of advice from District Superintendent Dr. Suzanne Scallion.
“I would express extreme caution about where we’re going to find those funds, because we’ve cut staff for two consecutive years,” she said. “We’re making such good progress that this is a very difficult time to look at cutting (teachers). I think the momentum is significant.”
Scallion said that many communities statewide are looking at budget overrides of as much as $13 million, and believes that Westfield’s budget plight is not unique.
“I know other communities are grappling with similar issues,” she said.
“If 83 percent of your budget is personnel, thats the only place you can look,” she said. “But if you look at the schools, the needs are very evident. We’ve been waiting for some technology changes and basic tech needs. We have some significant needs at the Voke. Clearly, we’re waiting for news on the new school project. We have a lot of work to be done over the next few years and this would be a difficult obstacle.”
Ultimately, a decision was not made on the request, but a motion to move the budget to the Finance Sub-Committee passed unanimously.
A date for the Finance Subcommittee to evaluate the budget hasn’t been set yet, but Knapik said that the Subcommittee would look to have the budget done by the end of the month and ready to present to the City Council in mid-May.
Following the meeting, opinions were mixed regarding the reaction to the budget and what it’s fate will be going forward through the Finance Subcommittee.
“It’s the first time (doing the budget) for me, but we’ve always made things work in Westfield,” said Rix. “Fiscal things are tight throughout the state, throughout the nation.”
“(Tonight) people saw that we’re doing things a little different, we’re looking at level service, but within that, there’s tweaks and changes,” he added. “Look at the plusses and minuses on our fixed costs. We’ve taken technology to shift costs and save money, but other things are catching up. That’s today’s world.”
“People didn’t listen to me,” said Knapik. “$1.3 million for that teacher pay raise package. Half of that would’ve been $673,000. My offering to the union originally was something that we obviously could afford based on the projections that I had last year, and now look at what it’s done to the bottom line. But people didn’t want to hear that.”
“$1.9 million is a lot of money to make up,” Committee member Cindy Sullivan said, to which Knapik replied “83 percent of your budget is in personnel. We were fair and honest with the union all along about the numbers, and that’s what it is.”
