(Presented to the School Board Sep. 9, 2008)
Good evening Mr Manaseri, Mr. Sachs and Members of the Board,
When I heard you would be discussing budget guidelines soon I thought hard about how to convey my concerns to you.
I hope the picture I am going to show you helps you think about Brighton School District budgeting in a new way. The information is available to all of us in school district publications, but you very likely have not seen it presented in this way before.
This graph shows what has been going on with Brighton School District spending, just since 2000.
The bottom, blue line represents inflation corrected for enrollment changes, and in general represents reasonable annual spending increases that accommodate growth pressures.
When spending consistently exceeds the blue line, property taxes increase at rates higher than inflation, which, in turn, increases the burden on families and business owners already struggling to pay rents and mortgages and keep up with rising food and fuel costs.
The top, red line represents Brighton General Fund spending since 2000.
As the numbers show, we are currently exceeding reasonable spending levels by approximately 20%. Just since 2000, as represented by the gap between the lines, we have spent 42.6 million dollars more than we should have. Needless to say, that money, back in the pockets of a community as educationally-minded as Brighton is, could have boosted college savings funds or could have paid for desperately needed pre-school programs or after-school lessons or sports clubs.
Even more alarming, overspending seems to have become normal and habitual. Please ask yourselves if it is sustainable. If you were overspending your own household income at this rate, you would be going bankrupt. But you, as our representatives, are overspending our income at this rate, so it is no wonder that property taxes have become a political hot button, that our town is losing population, and that a few more ordinary Brighton citizens are turning up at these meetings.
At the last BBE meeting (Aug. 26) I heard some banter about the “R” word, which turned out to be “rollover”, as in “rollover budget”, so I’m going to extend that theme and use some ‘r’ words of my own. In framing your budget discussions and proposals for this year, please, each of you, Represent my, and all Brighton’s citizens’ serious pocketbook concerns. Be Reasonable and Responsible enough to propose a Reduced spending budget. As a small community, we can’t have a big impact on global trends, but this local trend is actually within our power to Reverse.
I’m a mother of 4, so I know it’s hard to say “no”, especially when education and our worthy teachers are involved. But decades of research has shown that more spending doesn’t make better schools. Get comfortable with all these “R” words, especially “Reduce” and “Reverse”. More important, get comfortable with saying No.
