To The Editor:
I have to commend any young adult like Phoebe Paine, daughter of Berlin BOE member Jeff Paine from Grafton, who takes the initiative to get involved in their communities (Letter to the Editor 4/3/09). I read her letter with great interest and amazement! I wish that more young people would get involved this way.
I, too, was at the Berlin School District BOE special Budget workshop on 3/31/09, but I took away a totally different opinion of that night’s events. First, I, too, had to wait in the hallway for the executive session of the BOE to be finished, and, yes, it did run longer than expected. After that we seem to have been in two different meetings. I went to the BOE budget workshop meeting to learn about the 2009-2010 fiscal budget and what happened surprised me. First we need to clarify something, this was a posted BOE Budget workshop where the fiscal budget was supposed to be discussed and worked out. In years past you will see that I have been a vocal supporter of opening up this process which had for many years been done in closed sessions away from the public’s view.
What I saw that Tuesday night was democracy in action. We have Administrators on one side who were supposed to have preliminary budget numbers ready for the BOE to review. That’s what budget workshops are for! And what happened was that an Administration came with spending items that they felt needed to be voted on and passed even without the full context of the budget presented to the members of the BOE. I found this infuriating and perplexing. I sure wouldn’t want any of the BOE members to vote to approve anything without having at least some information on the subject most definitely. I don’t want them to vote to approve an 18 million dollar budget when they couldn’t possibly have any idea of how these spending items would impact the overall budget. It’s like going out and purchasing an expensive car without knowing how much money you had available to spend and if you could afford the purchase, payments and costs from your family budget – even if you really want the car!
I believe that Phoebe was correct in saying that an apology was due, but she again was slightly off target. The administration is the one who holds this burden as they were the ones who weren’t prepared with budget numbers that night. I know all about how they only received the State portion of the numbers that day, but something could have been presented to the BOE that night. Remember we are paying an Interim Superintendent, a Interim Business Manager, a business manager in training, and a staff of 3-4 people in the business office getting a good salary to do this kind of work. I guess I just expect more for my hard earned tax dollars than mediocrity. These days we have to expect more from less, but we seem to be paying more and getting less and that really upsets me.
I believe that the administration’s burden here is that if they weren’t able to be prepared to work that night then they should have asked to postpone the meeting thereby freeing up the lawyers, architects and the other staff not to mention the BOE members who give up their family time for these meetings. An apology is due, and the buck stops at the door of the Interim Superintendent!
Now as for appreciating all the wonderful things that these interim people do for the Berlin Central School District, please list them? I’m waiting! I can’t think of what more we could do for some of these people that would make their jobs more appealing – great wages, $120,000+ a year in one case and $500 a day in another. I can’t believe that in these hard economic times that we couldn’t find a superbly qualified Superintendent or Business Manager for less than that. Oh, and don’t forget the retirement waiver so that some of them can collect their retirement and get paid by us too! You the taxpayers are paying twice for one employee. Those are some pretty good incentives to work hard for this District. I will give praise when praise is due but we as taxpayers are getting hosed when it comes to some of the salaries we pay these administrators. I expect these employees of our school district to do a better job, and in the financial crisis that we are supposedly in (I’m not sold on that either) I expect to see “out of the box thinking” to solve our current problems. What we seem to be getting is twenty year outdated ideas and a clear lack of imagination by these so called experts.
I apologize ahead of time to Ms. Phoebe Paine if she is in any way offended by my opinions.
Andrew Zlotnick
CCBSD (Concerned Citizens of the Berlin School District)
Petersburgh