Yet another Educrat makes “a thunder” he can’t back up. C’mon, blowhard, show me that oath! (Reformatted, emphasis mine, entire article after the jump):
Livingston told school board members to meet the tax cap budget number required by the Manchester city charter, more than $2.5 million will have to be removed from her $165.2 million request. Last week during a public hearing on the budget, city resident Patrice Bernard reminded board members of the oath of office they took back in January, “swearing to uphold the City Charter” – and the city’s tax cap. “If your word means nothing, you don’t deserve to be sitting in those seats,” said Bernard. “Keep your word. I expect you to uphold the tax cap.”
Good going girl! Make SURE they’re reminded that they have boundaries – duly voted upon and set by the people that pay their salaries. After all who is supposed to be in charge here? Who are the employers and who are the employees? Well, it seems that Principal Krantz never got the message:
Those comments brought McLaughlin Middle School Principal William Krantz, a Bedford resident, to the microphone with a response, even though he “wasn’t planning on speaking.”
“The oath that you all took is to our children, first and foremost,” said Krantz. He then promised to be sitting next to Livingston when and if she advocates for the “needs” budget vs. the tax cap budget.
“In 2016, it’s mind boggling to me that we have to come here every year and beg for minimal resources in order to do a job that is not getting any easier for us to do,” said Krantz. “We love it, we’re going to do it and we’re going to fight like crazy. I make no apologies for fighting on behalf of our schools. We need you to fight for us. We need you guys to fight. We need a “needs” budget – we need more than that. We’re doing a heck of a job on not enough resources.”
C’mon, big guy, I wanna see that oath! Oh, I see – you can’t! I understand why – it doesn’t exist. Just like the “Social Contract” I keep hearing about from the Left that is supposed to bind us all together to do all kinds of things.
Sidenote: Funny, every time someone said that to me, I asked “show me it, please”. After the deer in headlights moment (i.e., “I NEVER expected anyone to actually ask to see it – NOW what do I do??”) and the “humanahumanahyumana” stammering, they generally just walked away, beaten like a whipped dog knowing they had been called out over a falsehood (or I got the “Well, I NEVER!” and stomping off down the hall).
Of course you can’t but it makes for quite the small rhetorical blurb / sound bite. It puts that SJW side of you out front – “look how good and moral I am for throwing out the “it’s for the children” card”. No, it means you’re incapable of stringing two sentences together in a coherent and relevant logical structure and articulate a valid need.
Beg? Really – beg? If you don’t like the conditions under which you are working, there is a very simple solution: leave. The taxpayers of Manchester have made it VERY clear – do your job with the money we give you. Period. Fight for us? Sadly, that’s pretty much what taxpayers said in passing the cap because NO ONE was fighting for them – and they finally rose up and said we’re sick of it.
It is BECAUSE of bureaucrats (and in labor terms, pure overhead vs being direct labor that teaches the kids) can’t seem to stop looking at everything as “need”. Been there, done that when on my hamlet’s budget committee. EVERYTHING is a need – and the ask is always bigger than necessary. It was our job to say “No” (although once in a while, we did say “more”). Needs, yes; wants, no. Fiscal frugality – I always looked at the budgets as if it WAS my money being spent (while most bureaucrats didn’t – it was someone else’s money for them to spend).
Krantz is just being a retread of what I heard years ago at our town meeting from the union side of the Educational-Industrial complex as two of the honchos were talking and not realizing I was listening: “The enrollment is down but the needs are higher.” Translation: there can NEVER be a cut in our budget! But I do have to hand it to that gal: she was pithy with her words even though she was still self-seeking (or if you prefer: rent-seeking). Krantz, for being a Principal, couldn’t even reach that low bar. Good God, and he is in charge of a school?
But here’s the deal – I do understand that with some things, the Feds and Concord do mandate spending on things that the local taxpayers are supposed to be on the hook for, especially for special Ed. And all that money is “mandatory” and forcing spending on things that perhaps the locals wouldn’t otherwise do (like lunches, mandated by the Feds – they aren’t picking up the entire tab. Ditto Concord).
Well, you can at least get rid of the Feds by just refusing their money that comes with those “strings attached”. Yes, that then comes with LOCAL responsibility to pay for it all, but at least then you can go tell the Feds to go pound sand. But that still leaves the NH level – the State passing laws but not the bucks. Well, there is an escape clause to all of that – but it takes some political stones by the elected leaders to both recognize AND use it:
[Art.] 28-a. [Mandated Programs.] The state shall not mandate or assign any new, expanded or modified programs or responsibilities to any political subdivision in such a way as to necessitate additional local expenditures by the political subdivision unless such programs or responsibilities are fully funded by the state or unless such programs or responsibilities are approved for funding by a vote of the local legislative body of the political subdivision.
No funding? No doing. Period. It can be done – if you have the political will to stand up. It will not be easy – heck, I got push back every I asked both the Town and the School Board what programs they believed they had to legally do but did not have funding from above. I was never was able to crack that barrier – and I wonder to this day how much local taxpayers SHOULDN’T have to be paying for.
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Paul Feely’s City Hall: Financial fireworks expected over school budget request
THERE COULD BE fireworks downtown Monday night, and they won’t be of the post-Fisher Cats game variety. A special meeting of the Board of School Committee will be held at 7 p.m. in the Aldermanic Chambers at City Hall to review the fiscal year 2017 school budget.
If recent discussions on school funding are any indication, it could be a long night.
Last month, Superintendent of Schools Debra Livingston submitted her “needs” FY 2017 budget request seeking a $4.1 million increase in spending over the district’s current $161 million budget.
The budget totals about $165.2 million and exceeds the city’s tax cap by about $2.5 million. Driving the hike are increases in salary and benefit line items that total more than $2.6 million, an increase of $842,632 in tuition to cover special education outplacement and a $485,103 increase in the district’s debt service.
Livingston told school board members to meet the tax cap budget number required by the Manchester city charter, more than $2.5 million will have to be removed from her $165.2 million request.
Last week during a public hearing on the budget, city resident Patrice Bernard reminded board members of the oath of office they took back in January, “swearing to uphold the City Charter” – and the city’s tax cap.
“If your word means nothing, you don’t deserve to be sitting in those seats,” said Bernard. “Keep your word. I expect you to uphold the tax cap.”
Those comments brought McLaughlin Middle School Principal William Krantz, a Bedford resident, to the microphone with a response, even though he “wasn’t planning on speaking.”
“The oath that you all took is to our children, first and foremost,” said Krantz. He then promised to be sitting next to Livingston when and if she advocates for the “needs” budget vs. the tax cap budget.
“In 2016, it’s mind boggling to me that we have to come here every year and beg for minimal resources in order to do a job that is not getting any easier for us to do,” said Krantz. “We love it, we’re going to do it and we’re going to fight like crazy. I make no apologies for fighting on behalf of our schools. We need you to fight for us. We need you guys to fight. We need a “needs” budget – we need more than that. We’re doing a heck of a job on not enough resources.”
