Council, BOE and BET Should Formalize Cooperation
Bruce Kimmel, Member, Board of Education
May 12, 2007

In the wake of the controversial debate over the 2007-08 operating budget, several elected and appointed officials have called for sustained, year-round cooperation among the three departments that craft the budget: the Common Council, Board of Education, and Board of Estimate and Taxation (BET). I have long-supported cooperation among these bodies and hope we can formalize some sort of working arrangement.

But it won't be easy. The BOE is an elected body that must answer not only to the people of Norwalk, but also to the state and federal governments. Many of our decisions about staffing, program development, even our transportation costs, are related to various state and federal mandates, as well as contractual obligations.

Another obstacle to cooperation between the BOE and especially the Council is that the BOE does not have committees that meet on a regular basis. During my eight years on the Council, I increasingly valued the detailed, in-depth discussions that took place at monthly committee meetings. Council committees are generally flexible when it comes to public participation, which adds a special dimension to many discussions and keeps Council members grounded in reality.

After being elected to the BOE in 2005, I chose the curriculum, finance, and negotiating committees. These committees, unlike Council committees, meet on an "as needed" basis. Since then, the curriculum committee has not met; the negotiating committee has met once; and I have never participated in a finance committee meeting.

(I recall one occasion months ago when I received an email about the need for a finance committee meeting. No agenda was attached; no details or explanation of any sort were provided. It was called on short notice and I was unable to attend. I'm not sure if the meeting ever took place.)

Board members say they prefer to have issues discussed by the entire Board at regular meetings. That's a legitimate point of view. For instance, beginning last fall the superintendent began to deliver budget updates at BOE meetings. Toward the end of the year, Board members received the superintendent's recommended budget. Lots of questions were posed, publicly and privately. These questions were always answered promptly. A full-fledged public discussion of the recommended budget was scheduled for three days in early January.

After the presentations and discussions, the BOE adopted the superintendent's recommendation without change.

Having participated in Council budget discussions for eight years, I noticed that Board members approach the operating budget in a manner similar to members of the Council's Public Works and Parks and Recreation committees: the department head explains what the department needs and the costs, Council members look over the spreadsheets and usually approve the request in its entirety. The department head then discusses the proposed budget request with the city's finance director.

This is essentially what happens to the BOE budget: after the Board adopts a budget, the superintendent discusses it with the finance director. When the finance director is ready to make his final operating budget recommendation, which invariably includes major cuts in departmental requests, he sends it to the full Council and the BET. And the debate begins.

The major difference is that Council members, because of their committee work, are extremely knowledgeable about particular parts of the operating budget. In contrast, BOE members, because of the magnitude of the education budget (roughly 55% of the total city budget) and because they do not participate in detailed, committee-based discussions, which include the public, are not as knowledgeable about the education budget. To remedy this problem, I believe the BOE's finance committee should meet on a year-round, monthly basis.

Not having monthly committee meetings (and possibly two or three meetings a month during budget season) creates another problem when dealing with complex fiscal issues: over-dependence on the superintendent. And this, in turn, can lead to procedural problems. For example, the BOE officially adopted a budget that called for a 7.7% increase in education spending. In the midst of the budget debate, the superintendent announced that because of "new information," spending would increase 6.23%; he later whittled that down to about 5.9%.

But he had no power to change the BOE budget without first receiving approval from the Board, or at least it's finance committee. Technically, it is not his budget.

In order to have more constructive budget discussions in the future, I recommend that the Board of Education's finance committee begin to meet on a monthly basis. And members of that committee should meet monthly with representatives from the Council's finance committee and from the BET.

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