Walpole needs fiscal task force
Partisan rancor sabotaged federal lawmakers’ well-intentioned effort two months ago to seek bipartisan solutions to bring down the rising national debt. But in a town like Walpole, which bills itself as “The Friendly Town,” a similar committee might actually come to some accord if given the opportunity to address the current municipal fiscal crisis in Walpole. It is quite evident that the town is in a fiscal crisis. Taxpayers are staring down the barrel of two proposition 2.5 overrides in the June 2012 …
More education spending and more teachers = same results
Andrew J. Coulson at BigGovernment.com pointed out in a June 2010 article that despite skyrocketing education spending in the U.S. over the past several decades, student achievement has been stagnant.
“Over the past forty years, public school employment has risen 10 times faster than enrollment,” Coulson writes.
“If you graduated from high school in 1980, your entire K-12 education cost your fellow taxpayers about $75,000, in 2009 dollars. But the graduating class of 2009 had roughly twice that amount lavished on their public school careers. The extra $75,000 we’re now spending has done wonders for public school employee union membership, dues revenue, and political clout. It’s done a whole lotta nothin’ for student learning,” Coulson writes.
According to Coulson, “about two thirds of public school employment growth has been teachers (41 percent) or teachers’ aides (23 percent). The remaining third was comprised almost entirely of support staff in schools and district offices.”
Coulson concludes: “given that adding a couple of million new instructional jobs did nothing to improve achievement at the end of high school, there’s no reason to expect that shedding a few hundred thousand of them would hurt it.”
Perhaps those advocating for the school override in Walpole this year would be interested to read Coulson’s article.
I thought this chart was particularly telling and provides us with all the information we really need to know:
State of the Town budget address
Here is video, as filmed by the Walpole Recreation Department, of the State of the Town budget address given by Town Administrator Michael Boynton on February 6.
Walpole’s somber override history
This year will be the fourth fifth sixth seventh consecutive year that Walpole voters have been faced with a Proposition 2.5 tax override. This could be a record.
Below is a comprehensive list of all of the past overrides, and how they fared with Walpole’s notoriously conservative electorate.
Based on these results, I think high voter turnout, as was seen in the 2007 and 2008 override elections, correlates strongly with an override not passing.
Lower turnout is more likely to mean an override will pass, although the 2009 successful library override appears to be a bit of an anomaly.
Looking at this list, I can’t believe the town proposed raising taxes by $3.9 million in 2007, it didn’t pass, and yet the sky didn’t fall! As I recall, the schools found a surplus that year, and the municipal departments were able to move some money around. Could a similar scenario happen this year? Good thing we didn’t pass the 2007 override, because it seems evident Town Hall didn’t need it after all. That is sure to be a talking point brought up by override opponents this year, and municipal officials had better have an explanation for how that turned out not to be as bad as they had said it would be. Town Hall credibility is a big issue here that should not be overlooked.
One thing to notice is that the proposed $3 million operational override this year will add almost $300 to the average tax bill and stay on the rolls forever. In contrast, all of the previous overrides for new facilities have been for smaller amounts – only as high as $80 per year – and have declined each year over two decades.
Does anyone else have any observations based on these results?
June 3, 2006: Police Station Override ($10.5 million)
Turnout: 21%
Yes: 1250 (38.4%)
No: 1658 (50.9%)
Blanks: 351 (10.7%)
Total: 3259
March 31, 2007 Special Election: Municipal and School Operational Override ($3,900,000 – $2.65 million for schools, $1.3 million for municipal) ($400 per family per year, forever)
Turnout: 48%
Yes: 2937 (39.2%)
No: 4550 (60.7%)
Total: 7,487
November 4, 2008 (coincides with presidential election): Library Override ($7 million) ($80 per family per year, declining each year over 20 years)
Turnout: 82.7%
Yes: 6116 (44.7%)
No: 6978 (51.1%)
Blanks: 561 (4.1%)
Total: 13655
June 6, 2009: Library Override ($6.2 million) ($70 per family per year, declining each year over 20 years)
Turnout: 35%
As Certified After Recount:
Yes: 2,775 (48.4%)
No: 2767 (48.2%)
Blanks: 193 (3.3%)
Total: 5735
June 5, 2010: Robbins Road Police Station Override ($7.9 million + $600,000 Fire Station Study) ($78 per family per year, declining each year over 20 years)
Turnout: 34%
Yes: 1057 (19%)
No: 4269 (77%)
Blanks: 223 (4%)
Total: 5549
June 4, 2011: Walpole Woodworkers Override ($4.7 million including study and insurance) ($46 per family per year, declining each year over 20 years)
Turnout: 26%
Yes: 1576 (37%)
No: 2362 (55.5%)
Blanks: 315 (7.4%)
Total: 4253
June 2, 2012: Municipal and School Operational Override ($3 million – $2.7 million for schools, $300,000 for municipal) ($330 per family per year, forever)
?
Any predictions of what the 2012 result will be?
How much would this override buy?
If passed by voters in the town election on June 2, the average Walpole family will add about $330 more to their property tax bill, above the 2.5 percent annual increase already built in, every year, forever.
How much would $330 per year buy? A lot of things, actually.
By 2017, the average Walpole family will have handed over a total of $1650 from their wallets to the government. That’s nothing to sneeze at.
By 2022, the average Walpole family will have handed over a total of $3300 from their wallets to the government. For some families, that could mean issues paying off a mortgage, or paying for a car.
The town would collect about $30 million in just 10 years from your wallets (in addition to the $70 million they already collect yearly.) With that kind of money, it would take less than a decade for the town to build a new police station, a new fire station, and a new senior center, and still have money left over.
By 2017, the town will have handed out a total of $650,000 in raises to non-union town employees. By 2022, that number will have doubled to $1,300,000. Millions more will have been shoveled off during that time for raises to unionized employees. Kind of a scary thought.
$330 per year. Per family. Forever.
$3300 over ten years. Per family. Forever.
No, thanks.
Some families simply can not afford a tax hike like this. Walpole is not a wealthy town. Town Hall must CUT, not hurt families.
Rhetoric on unfunded mandates doesn’t match action
Town and school officials have made a big deal this year about how unfunded and underfunded mandates from both the state and federal governments are putting a significant drag on the school budget, and that Town Hall can’t control some of the increased costs of these mandates.
In particular, the Special Education budget takes up almost a fourth of the entire Walpole school budget, and most of it is required by a tangle of mandates that are simply not properly funded.
Since our legislators aren’t responsible enough to fund these initiatives themselves, Walpole officials say our property taxpayers should pick up the tab instead.
I have a better idea that will actually fix the issue. This is an election year. In just a few months, every Walpole voter will have the opportunity to vote out the legislators who continue to perpetuate this problem.
Yet shockingly, many town officials have demonstrated an unwillingness to support efforts to remove these legislators. A few current top town board members have publicly supported the re-election campaigns of some legislators who have provided a lot of rhetoric but very little action when it comes to relieving the burdens on cities and towns.
Walpole is fortunate to have four state representatives, including one Republican, and a state senator who lives in town. So far, none of the four Democrats, including two who are considered to be very close to House leadership, have signed on to co-sponsor or even sponsor any bills currently languishing in the state legislature to fully fund mandates on cities and towns.
If it’s true that a significant part of the blame for Walpole’s fiscal crisis should be placed on our state and federal elected officials, there’s no reason that any Walpole official should support any of these legislators this year. And though these legislators offer a lot of talk about how they oppose unfunded mandates, so do legislators from basically every other community in the state – and yet behind the promises appear to be nothing.
Walpole Rep. John Rogers (D-Norwood) recently announced that he would push for the full funding of a mandate for the transportation of homeless children by the Walpole school district. In two decades in the legislature, this is apparently the best Rogers can do when it comes to unfunded mandates – only after the State Auditor ruled that the state had to fund this mandate anyway, because it was in violation of the state’s mandates law.
This year, voters shouldn’t be fooled again. Walpoleans should simply vote their legislators out, rather than perpetuate the problem.
The problem of underfunded mandates will only continue if legislators realize that local officials are simply passing the buck to their property taxpayers to deal with. That’s not fair, and it’s not the best way to solve the problem. Avoiding addressing the real cause of the mandates problem is also not “sustainable” for this town or any other town in Massachusetts.
There is also clearly something very wrong with the relationship between municipalities and state government in Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Municipal Association, which is supposed to advocate on behalf of cities and towns at the state level, spent about $300,000 in taxpayer dollars in 2011 to lobby state legislators – and little significant results appear to have come from it in terms of relieving the burden on cities and towns.
The MMA hasn’t even updated the legislative advocacy page on its website since the 2009-2010 legislative session, calling into question whether that organization is really as committed to the fight for municipal relief at the legislative level as they claim to be. If they can’t even take the time to update their website with new legislative priorities and a comprehensive list of what they are fighting for, one has to wonder whether their lobbying effort is getting just as stale as their website. Are our tax dollars being well spent with the MMA?
A concerted, coordinated statewide effort to actively push state legislators to properly fund their unfunded mandates until they can’t ignore the voices of the people must take place. Frankly, I’m not convinced such an effort has ever taken place – why do so many elected officials consistently talk about supporting their cities and towns but yet nothing ever gets done? Property taxpayers are on the hook here – it is time for legislators to hear the concerns of their constituents.
Sad to see Buckley go
While School Committee member Bill Buckley and I often had policy disagreements, I am disappointed to see him not run for re-election in 2012. He had previously told 180 that he was fully expecting to run, and that is why I was surprised by his announcement that he would instead pursue graduate school studies.
As I recall, Buckley was at one time the youngest elected Town Meeting Representative in Walpole history, although he clearly has grown a few years older now and I believe that title was later taken by another member of the same family, Bobby Buckley.
Buckley is a great individual who served on the School Committee with a genuine desire to help the town. He cared about making sure that the school district was top-quality. We may disagree about exactly how to make it top-quality, but such is the nature of politics.
He may have been the youngest member of the School Committee, but his points were consistently sound, reasonable, and sensible. I have a lot of respect for him. I am sad to see him go.
Good luck, Bill.
Now speculation begins as to who will run to replace Buckley on the School Committee. Will an anti-override, conservative candidate run? Where is James Taylor when you need him?
Would Christine Coury run on an anti-override platform?
Town should not seek override in FY 2013
Updated 2/14/12 1:30 p.m. with comment from School Superintendent Lincoln Lynch about ability to house 20-40 new teachers.
Well, here we go.
During his annual State of the Town budget address last Monday evening, Town Administrator Michael Boynton formally asked the Board of Selectmen to put a mammoth $3 million property tax override on the June 2 town election ballot. The initiative would help fund the restoration of dozens of teachers that have been lost to budget cuts in the last few years, along with new teachers to meet rising class sizes. A small portion of the funds – $300,000 – would go to adding four new Parks and Building Maintenance personnel, along with a new police officer.
If approved by a majority of voters, each Walpole family would pay over $100 extra on their property tax bills every year, above the maximum 2.5 percent annual property tax increases already allowed by state law.
In previous years, Boynton and town department heads have implemented significant cuts to help eliminate the town’s yearly budget deficits.
But the combination of continued unfunded and underfunded mandates from the federal and state governments regarding everything from education to veteran’s services, along with skyrocketing collective bargaining costs for town employee salaries, and also reduced or level-funded state and federal funding, has created a multi-million-dollar budget deficit in the schools and municipal departments for the next fiscal year.
“Fiscal year 2013 appears to be the year when creativity, effort, and passion alone will not be enough to close all funding gaps,” said Boynton.
So, in earnest, Boynton and school officials are turning to the people of Walpole to ask them to chip in and pay more in what they hope will be a “sustainable” source of revenue for the foreseeable future.
Unfortunately, Boynton and other leaders still have a long way to go before they should even consider coming to the taxpayers for more money. More budget cuts and spending reforms are still very much needed.
It’s worth noting that Boynton’s proposed budget calls for some reasonable, though modest, budget savings in some areas. The town will officially end its seven-year long failed experiment to see whether it is possible to attract and retain commercial development by having a full-time Economic Development & Grants Officer at Town Hall. Beginning this year, the town will consolidate the Economic Development office with the Town Planner’s office, a merging that most other towns in the area have already had in place for years. Unfortunately, the savings from the move will be minimal, because the town really hasn’t had a Planner for several months now anyway.
Major concessions from the town’s municipal employee unions have also contributed to a nearly $200,000 drop in town healthcare costs this year – a significant accomplishment that deserves praise. Boynton also announced a “major overhaul” in the compensation system for non-union town employees – reforms that he says will “replace [the town’s] step-plan system, one where employees move up based upon longevity, with pay scales that allow for employee movement within the plan solely upon merit.” The savings from this restructuring remain unclear, but they won’t be implemented until later in the fiscal year.
But noticeably absent from last Monday’s address was any mention of cutting raises for non-union municipal employees – a cost that in past years has totaled almost $130,000, and would immediately wipe away almost half of the $300,000 amount Boynton wants in additional revenue for municipal use through an override. Every non-union town employee – even high school students working at the library or Recreation Department – will be getting a 2 percent raise even though many in the private sector in Walpole have had their salaries frozen or even reduced during the recession.
The town’s Capital Budget also calls for the purchase of a brand new police car, which is a highly questionable expenditure given that the town already owns nine marked police vehicles, plus two motorcycles, and several unmarked cruisers. With slightly fewer than 40 total police officers, the town currently has about one vehicle for every four sworn officers in the department, and that’s only a conservative estimate. The oldest police car is from 2002, according to the town’s official online listing.
The Fire Chief in the City of Attleboro, Mass. used a 1995 Chevrolet Impala for 16 years before the city finally bought him a new car. That’s a lesson Walpole should learn from – no new new vehicles should be purchased for town departments until the old vehicle is literally no longer safe to drive.
Neither Boynton nor any other town official has yet offered an explanation as to why the town has gone on spending and hiring sprees during the past year – paying for new town vehicles, computers, and office renovations, while simultaneously ignoring a “town hiring freeze” to hire 12 new employees from clerks to crossing guards.
This year’s town budget, together with the budgets from years past, simply is not frugal and is not responsible. The town must be run more like a business – which means less complaining about revenue drying up and more making do with less.
The town must immediately impose a moratorium on new town vehicle purchases – starting with the new police car – and implement a real hiring freeze with no loopholes and no exceptions whatsoever. When an employee leaves, so be it. Others at Town Hall should be expected to work overtime to fill the duties of a coworker who has left, instead of leaving promptly at Town Hall closing time like some have reported.
Voters should also not be naive enough to believe that this permanent tax increase will be a “sustainable” revenue stream, as has been suggested by town leaders. The nature of government bureaucracies – and most businesses, too, of course – is that they keep getting bigger and bigger and hardly ever smaller.
As soon as government begins to rely on a new revenue stream, it is nearly impossible to take that revenue away because government gets too dependent on it. This override can never be repealed – the schools simply will never again be able to balance their budgets without it and if anybody tries to get rid of it there will be a clamor about its impact on the children. The voices of those of us who remember how the town balanced its budgets before property taxes were increased, when the sky did not fall and children still got a quality education, will be drowned out by the revisionist histories of those who insist that if taxes go down the schools will be irreparably harmed.
Simply put, what may be seen as “sustainable” today will inevitably be considered “still not nearly enough” five or ten years from now. Don’t be fooled by the rhetoric.
The reality is that the best way to put the town in “sustainable” fiscal condition for the long term is to simply stop spending so much. It is well-established that the biggest driver of budget deficits year after year in this town is personnel costs. Yet town officials do nothing to solve that problem – instead they keep hiring more employees, handing out pay raises, and Town Hall hasn’t been nearly as aggressive as it should be in achieving consolidations and regionalization in several town departments. The Animal Control Officer, Conservation Agent, Recreation Department, Health Department, and Engineering Department are just a few of the many town agencies that can and should be regionalized or drastically downsized.
Another question that has been answered but perhaps not satisfactorily to many voters in town: if the override passes this year, where will the 20-40 new teachers go? According to school officials, there are currently only two vacant classrooms in the Walpole elementary schools. There are no classrooms available at the high school.
School Superintendent Lincoln Lynch has said publicly, “I can say in all certainty, that no staff will be added beyond the current capacity to house them.”
But I wonder if Lynch’s explanation will suffice.
Blog post coming soon
It’s been over a week since I have last blogged here, and many weeks since I have blogged a long post about an issue. I also have been slow with columnizing in The Walpole Times.
I’ve been watching the town meetings this week – the Town Administrator budget address on Monday and the Selectmen’s meeting on Tuesday. There are so many very interesting issues to discuss, and so little time. Unfortunately, I have been preoccupied with other investigative stories that I’ve been working on, along with the usual schoolwork which appears to be much bigger this semester than last semester.
A new blog post should be coming within a few days.
Nomination papers now available
Nomination papers are now available at the Town Clerk’s office for anyone looking to run for town office in the June town election.
I am very much looking forward to seeing who decides to run. See 180′s previous election report here.
All Town Meeting Representatives are up for re-election this year, due to town-wide re-precincting. Only about once a decade are the voters given the power to oust every single RTM incumbent all at once. That means this is a prime opportunity for residents to start over from scratch or to at least give Town Meeting a bit of a remodeling. The status quo in Walpole isn’t working – it’s time to rebuild.
To run for Town Meeting Representative, one must get at least 25 signatures on your nomination papers from your home precinct. RTMs serve for three-year terms, though I don’t know how the terms will be staggered because of the re-precincting.
Being an RTM doesn’t even require saying anything at the twice-annual Town Meetings – just make sure to show up and to vote “No” to almost anything proposed by this Board of Selectmen, Finance Committee, Personnel Board, Capital Budget Committee, and Town Administrator and you should be good to go. I have been going to Town Meetings since middle school and would estimate that about 70% of RTMs have been in office for years and have never said a word during the meetings. I’m sure it’s possible to see whether I’m right about this, based on the meeting minutes. That might be an idea for a future blog post, including a thorough examination of voting and attendance records for all 150 RTMs.
Candidates for Selectman only need to get 50 signatures from all over town. Getting that small number of signatures is not a difficult task, if someone is genuinely interested in serving on that Board.
There is a helpful guide to running for office in Walpole (.pdf) for anyone who is interested in doing it, on the Town Clerk’s website.
If you plan to run for political office in Walpole, please contact me. I don’t care if you’re not a conservative, either. There is room for debate. I have supported non-conservatives in the past like Patrick Shield and Bill Buckley.
Here are two non-incumbents who are already planning to run for RTM this year. More are likely to step forward. I’m feeling change in the air. I’m feeling a rejection of the status quo. People are fired up and angry about the reckless spending from Town Hall:
Conservative John F. Robinson, Jr. is running for RTM in Precinct 4. Running on a fiscally-conservative platform. He is a Town Hall outsider, which is an asset in this campaign.
Former Selectman’s candidate and current aide to State Senator Jim Timilty, Patrick Shield (not a conservative, but still a moderate by most standards) is planning to run in precinct 6.
