Westbrook residents and school committee members spoke out against Mayor Mike Foley’s proposed $420,000 cut to the 2021-2022 school budget at a City Council meeting Monday, saying the negative impact on students and staff would be too great.

The school committee instead pushed for approval of its $42 million budget proposal, which is $1.3 million more than this year’s school budget. Foley’s plan would reduce the increase to about $850,000.

“We prepare this carefully, went through it, through it again, we do not feel we can cut $420,000 without impacting students and staff,” said School Committee Finance Chairperson Sue Salisbury.

Foley said he was “disappointed” not only in the schools’ push for the $1.3 million increase, but because during the budget process he had reached out to the committee to collaborate on making the cuts work, but heard no response.

“Mayor, it wasn’t that your request or outreach went unnoticed, it was that our answer was ‘no,'” Salisbury said.

Seven residents at the meeting and two other school committee members supported Salisbury’s stance, but City Council President Gary Rairdon said he agreed with Foley in that the school budget always gets to the council in the “final hour.”

“Not one school committee member said to me it is looking hard” to prevent a tax increase, Rairdon said. “They say they didn’t like the offer.”

Ward 3 Councilor Anna Turcotte also said the school budget process lacks transparency and leaves councilors uneasy, and Ward 2 Councilor Victor Chau called for more collaboration.

At the meeting, Foley, Rairdon and Chau said that they would like to have worked on a plan with the school committee to use federal funds to cover the increases or they could have used the past month to come up with other solutions.

The mayor’s combined municipal and school budget, which proposed about an $850,000 increase for schools over this year’s budget, would result in the tax rate rising from $17.86 to $18.07 per $1,000 of assessed property value, an increase of 21 cents, or 1.2%, over the current year’s rate. The owner of a median-priced $250,000 home would pay an additional $52.50 in property taxes  next year. Initially, Foley had asked the school committee to come up with a budget that resulted in no tax increase.

If the school budget passes as the School Committee proposes, with a $1.3 million increase, the tax rate would rise from $17.86 to $18.58 per $1,000 of assessed value. The owner of a $250,00 home in the city would pay $180, or 4%, more in taxes than they did this year.

Foley, reading from his budget message published before the meeting, argued that many residents cannot afford increasing taxes and keeping the city affordable is one of his main goals, and that “if the community is changing, and desires to price ourselves out of our own homes, then my work here may be done.”

“I am disappointed that many of our City Councilors who provided me earlier sound advice and support, might now be reconsidering their positions under the pressure of hearing from one sector of the community,” Foley said during the speech.

During the school budget presentation to the council Monday, Superintendent Peter Lancia said the schools’  “increased need for English language learners” as well as special ed students accounts for part of the increase, and that they cannot rely on potential increases to state aid.

Increased costs include the addition of two elementary ESL teachers, an elementary special ed teacher and a kindergarten teacher for Congin Elementary for a total of about $320,000, Lancia said.

“Many of our students come with significant language needs and we need to provide that regardless of the number of staff we have,” Lancia said.

Lancia told the American Journal that state guidelines call for each ESL student to have two class periods with their teacher, but “with caseloads of 40-60 students (per teacher), we cannot do that. Adding two elementary teachers will help as the first step.”

“We are the second most diverse school district in the state but don’t have the ESL resources we need,” resident and American Roots owner Ben Waxman said. “It’s incomprehensible we are talking about $400,000.”

Lancia also noted that the majority of their increase relates to pay raises for staff, which held off last year to reduce the tax impact.

Payroll alone accounts for about $32.7 million of the proposed budget, or 78%.

“Schools in this district lose high-quality teachers every year to our adjoining higher-paying school districts,” resident Flynn Ross said. 

Chau said his “problem was not the teachers, but the number of employees.”

“I believe you have too many employees and staff. I am not saying cut teachers, I love those teachers, but 700 employees and only 250 of them are teachers,” Chau said. “We can’t afford the staff you have. I am asking you to go back and try to figure out how to consolidate. We’ve outsourced our IT, animal control, things to reduce staff.”

Lancia said the “700 employees” figure includes coaches and temporary staff. There are about 466  teachers, aides, bus drivers and other direct educational staff members, he said.

Foley said that while the school budget addresses needs, the city has gone without addressing its own needs to reduce tax impacts.

“We have the same amount of patrol officers on the street since the 1980s. We need more firemen, plow truck drivers, road paving. We need a lot of things we sometimes can’t afford,” Foley said during the meeting.

“I am trying to stabilize our tax rate so when things return as normal, we can add more funding to our schools with a stable tax rate going up at a minimal level,” he said.

The City Council will further discuss and vote on the budget May 10.

A resident referendum on the school portion of the budget will be held June 8.

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