Community Corner

Conflict of Interest Raised As $81.8M Budget Passes

After refusing to cut $75,000 from the school budget for the 2013-14 fiscal year, Waterford Board of Finance member Cheryl Larder questioned if there is a conflict of interest for at least two members on Waterford's Board of Finance.

Board of Finance Chairman Ron Fedor’s wife is the principal of Great Neck Elementary School and Board of Finance member Mark Wiggins’ wife is a paraprofessional at Quaker Hill Elementary School.

Both voted against cutting $75,000 from the Board of Education’s $44.62 million budget proposal for the 2013-14 fiscal year Wednesday night. After that vote, board member Cheryl Larder said there is a letter in to the Ethics Commission to see if board members with relatives working in town departments should be able to vote on those departments’ budgets.

The comment by Larder ended a tense hearing between the Board of Finance and the Board of Education. Larder suggested cutting $75,000 from the Board of Education’s $44.62 million total – less than 0.2 percent of the total, as she repeatedly pointed out – because the school board routinely returns several hundred thousand dollars to the town.

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The Board of Finance voted 3-3, a failing vote, with board members Larder, J.W. “Bill” Sheehan and Norman Glidden voting for the cut and Alan Wilensky, Fedor and Wiggins voting against. That vote came after strong words by Superintendent Jerome Belair, who said the proposed cut could actually cause department heads to spend more money.

“I’m not so sure I’m going to continue to look for ways to save money if I’m going to be penalized for returning money,” Belair told the Board of Finance. “We need to have a much bigger conversation in the future of what we need to do with our funding.”

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The Story

Wednesday night, the Board of Finance ultimately finalized an $81.8 million budget for the 2013-14 fiscal year, a 3.86 percent increase over this year’s $78.79 million total. The board reinstated money into the budget Wednesday it had previously cut from the town’s fire departments.

Tensions were highest at the beginning of the meeting, when it was time to approve the Board of Education’s $44.62 million budget proposal for the upcoming school year – a 0.96 percent increase over this year’s $44.2 million total. Larder proposed cutting $75,000 from the budget, saying that the Board of Education routinely returns several hundred thousand dollars at the end of the year it doesn’t spend.

Larder said, if the pattern holds, the Board of Education could absorb the $75,000 cut and not have it affect its budget. However, several board members disagreed, including Wiggins.

Wiggins said the superintendent routinely comes within a percent of his overall budget, which would be applauded in the private sector. He also said this would just incentivize departments to spend the entire budget just to show they budgeted correctly – a statement Belair later agreed with.

“If it is such a small cut, why bother,” Wiggins said. “If it is not going to be affect anything, it almost seems petty to me.”

The board voted, and the motion failed 3-3. Right after that vote, Larder said there is a letter before the Ethics Commission questioning if people who are related to people who work in a town department should be able to vote on the budget for that department.

Fedor, who along with his wife being a principal has two sons who are Waterford police officers, said he already got a letter from the Ethics Commission saying it is okay for him to vote on the police and education budgets. He said the commission ruled it was okay for him to vote on the overall budgets, as long as he doesn’t vote on a family member's contract. Only the Waterford Representative Town Meeting votes on employee contracts.


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