Wed 17 Nov 2010
First, I got a note from somebody from Red River Threatres letting me know that she recorded the panel discussion after the screening of Waiting for Superman on Monday night and posted it on-line. Here is a link to the discussion.
http://www.youtube.com/user/RedRiverTheatres?feature=mhum#p/u
 The Nov. 9 discussion is also available. If it doesn’t appear, click on the ‘uploads’ tab. She actually posted a comment here on the blog  which has many links to their site.
 Now onto the budget,
The superintendent will be presenting his budget to the school board tonight at 7 PM at City Hall.
 You have probably heard that it is going to be a very difficult year. The $4+ million of Federal stimulus money, that the district used to pay for kindergarten teachers and assistant principals, is going away this year.
 In addition to the loss of revenue, the costs of salary and benefits are expected to increase significantly. Yesterday Stacey and I stopped by to talk to the Mayor about the Education Foundation and he told us that there will likely be a $10-$11 Million funding gap. In the paper he was quoted as saying that as many as 150 positions may be cut from the school district.
 Last week the Mayor’s office issued a press release stating that the tax rate had gone down from $17.85 in 2009 to $17.84 in 2010.
 Here is what the tax rates have looked like over the past three years
                          Muni                    County                Local Ed               State Ed.             Total
2010Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â $9.28Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â $ .96Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â $5.41Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â $2.16Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â $17.84
2009Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â $9.27Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â $1.02Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â $5.34Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â $2.22Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â $17.85
2008Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â $8.05Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â $1.04Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â $5.98Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â $2.28Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â $17.35
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One piece of good news is that the NH Supreme Court overturned the Tax Cap saying that it interferes with state laws that grant the power to set the budget with the aldermen.  Eventually someone will pass a law in Concord saying that this is OK. In the meantime, it can’t be enforced. And that is good news because the tax cap limits budget and tax increases to the rate of the Consumer Price Index for the previous year. In 2009 the CPI was -.04% There is a provision to override it with a 2/3 vote but that won’t matter this year.
 About 1/3 of our education funding comes from the state in the form of an adequacy grant . Last year we got $49 Million. That was less than we were supposed to get under the transition plan for the new formula, but given the state of the economy the amount was frozen. They only way the state was able to pay us that much was by using stimulus money. This year they have $21 Million of that money left to put toward state adequacy grants.
The Mayor wants the teachers’ union to open their contract again this year and renegotiate their health insurance contribution. The MEA leadership has said they have no intention of doing that. I have been told that teachers currently contribute 5%. If that is not accurate, please let me know.
 In 2009 the tax base was about $9.75 Billion. I am waiting for the tax rate to be posted on the NH DRA site so I can compare apples to apples, but I think the tax base remained fairly stable between 2009-2010. Hopefully it will remain stable going forward. If it does, the aldermen would need to raise the tax rate on schools by about $1.00 to make up the shortfall. Based on ten years of watching this process, I will tell you that that would be politically risky, but not impossible. I think it would be wise for us to start saying that an increase in the tax rate, given the circumstances, is reasonable.
 I have been doing this for ten years now so I leave out a lot of details. Please feel free to respond to this e-mail if you need clarification about something. This is a closed newsletter so the reply goes to me alone. I am going to post this whole thing on the blog.
November 21st, 2010 at 2:22 pm
Thanks for the note about WAITING FOR SUPERMAN, Kathy, but I thought it might be worth an alert to your audience that at this point there are only two days left in the film’s run at Red River Theatres.
The remaining showtimes are: Mon., Nov 22nd at 2:05, 5:25, 7:45 and
Tue., Nov 23rd: 2:05, 5:25, 7:45.
The theatre is just off Main St. near Gibson’s Bookstore and across from the Concord Cooperative Market, so parking is on street, or, esp, in wet weather, in a deck behind the theatres accessible from Storr St. http://www.redrivertheatres.org.
I’m in the process of uploading the final discussion of the film, a panel of Charter School reps including one parent, from Sat. Nov. 20th. At this point the first two segments of the discussion aren’t posted, but will be added later today.
Your blog is so detailed. What a wonderful resource all of this information is for those of us who’ve wished for someone to analyze the meetings we can’t attend. Wish you’d been in Concord when MY three children were in public schools…or that you were here now as the autonomous, all-powerful school board consolidates local elementaries and tears down historic buildings!