MIDDLEBURY NEEDS TO GET OUT OF REGION 15
Now that the 2008-09 Middlebury town budget has been passed, I wonder when taxpayers are going to realize that the driving force behind the spending increases is the Region 15 school budget.
Until we can get the education budget under control, the town budget will continue to be reduced and residents will feel the pinch. Unfortunately, no one high enough in public office is willing to admit publicly that the school budget is out of control and that we seriously need to look at deregionalization because we have no voice against Southbury.
Until we consider that option, we will continue to see cuts made across the board to town services until there is nothing left to cut. At the same time, taxpayers should keep an eye on how much the school budget grows.
Linda Mascoli
Middlebury
Posts
22 comments:
Brilliant idea. You think our school costs are high now, lets leave the region and build our own schools. wow. How did you do in math 101 ?
Build what schools?
We have plenty of schools. If we need more space then we take back the historical society building and the Mary I. Johnson offices - lots of classroom space. Brookside and Ginsburg can use their clubhouses for classrooms.
You just gotta think outside the box. Deregionalize!
You could always go back to the was it was. Each town had it's own elementary schools and they shared the high school. If you want to make some money, charge Southbury a fee for every elementary student they send to Middlebury. I bet you they would build their own schools.
I beg to differ with the point that our high officials have been fighting it. There are people that have been fighting it for 20 years.
1 there hasn't been enough support for it because of all the soccer moms in Middlebury
2 It would cost massive amounts of money to legally seperate the two Towns cause you can bet that Southbury will bring a lawsuit.
3 The state could care less and there have been lots of times that the high officials of Middlebury have tried to do that but it has always been voted down.
I agree we need to deregionalize but with this finiancial mess we are in How is anyone going to vote to deregionalise when it is going to cost you (the taxpayer) a lot of money to do.
Its a good thought but there is no easy solution.
End the Regional School System??? Who is going to absorb the cost for a stand alone system?
we need to reginalise with a town that is our size As long as we are with a town the size of Southbury we will always overpay. Southbury knows that they have a good thing going with us.
Another Idea is to rethink that the way the region taxes each town. The problem is that its still going to cost a fortune in Legal fees to change that because Southbury will bring a lawsuit.
Where are we going to find another town our size that isn't already in a regional district? I agree with you that the funding mechanism is the key. Unfortunately, you cannot find any lawmakers that want to upset the existing cart.
I know thats why it is not possible. What we should of done is regionlise with Woodbury when we had the chance. You can't blame anyone for that because back then we didn't know Southbury was going to get that large
How about, drop out of the Region except for the High School. Would that make a difference in the bottom line? That we could do relatively easily.
I keep reading the police blotter every day - but I don't see the names of those two girls who stole the signs.
What's the deal here? Is Bill Pape in bed with ESTJ too?
Come on. Release the information. Place a big S on their foreheads for STUPID!
Haven't the names been published yet?
>> Is there a coverup?
Which paper has the balls to print those names? Republican-American? Bee? Voices?
What about a little investigative reporting? Is that too much to ask? When you find out the names - PLEASE - print some background on this matter. Name names, damn it!
I'd like one of the papers to print some of the Deangelis drivel that borders on obscenity and slander. "Liar", "Asshole", "Stupid Gormley", "Dumb Ass Perrotti", "K Y Jelly", "F**cking".
Shine the spot light on what is really wrong with Middlebury. Deangelis may be worse of a problem for Middlebury than Region 15, and that is saying something.
"With the economy in a slide and the credit markets seized up, states are slashing budgets, eliminating jobs....." from CT Post 10/9/08
but not in Middlebury.....taxes are up when we should be cutting spending......(more then 3 % )
In today's paper I saw that they only got $30,000 from that auction at public works. It was mostly junk, except for the big truck next to the gate.
How much more of the St. John Construction Company is left? Are we talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars? Gormley should sell all of that immediately.
I also think we should sell the Mary I. Johnson park to developers of over 55 housing. Somebody earlier suggested this as a joke but it not a joke. If the White Avenue crowd don't want a park then sell the land. It is probably worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. If we restrict to over 55 housing then no school kids. We get taxes but no kids. Win-Win.
Isn't that a good idea?
yea, Brookside was supposed to be over 55. What happened ?
They are on public water. Put something in the water to stop them from pumping out babies. There are almost 100 children in Brookside. Maybe St. John should be paying for that. Let's see, $13K per year times 100 = holy cow! It is costing 1 million three hundred thousand dollars per year to educate just the Brookside kids.
You think Washington Drive was Doctor St. John's worst fiasco. Doesn't compare to $1.3 million per year for Brookside kids. Still not too late to put something in the water before there are 200 kids in Brookside. That would be $2.6 million per year.
Gonna take a lot of town hall reductions to pay for that, folks!
Reminds me of a cartoon where the Road Runner hands a stick of dynamite to Wily Coyote with the fuse burning down.
Ed St. John is the Road Runner, Tom Gormley is Wily Coyote, and Brookside is the stick of dynamite.
It all blows up and guess what?
Yup! Deangelis blames Gormley!
Beep! Beep!
Here's some Brookside math for you.
There are 125 homes in Brookside. Taxes are about $7,000 per year for those homes. That gives $882K per year in taxes.
Educating those 100 kids costs $1.3 million per year.
Which means that Brookside is dragging down Middlebury by $418K per year, It will get worse when they have more babies.
Thanks a lot Ed. Thanks a lot Elaine. Thanks a lot P&Z.
Go ahead Deangelis. Blame Gormley.
To "Taxpayer":
Reminds me of a cartoon where the Road Runner hands a stick of dynamite to Wily Coyote with the fuse burning down.
Ed St. John is the Road Runner, Tom Gormley is Wily Coyote, and Brookside is the stick of dynamite.
It all blows up and guess what?
Yup! Deangelis blames Gormley!
First of all, I love how we've gotten to the point of using loony tunes cartoons analogies for this town - shows just how low DeAngelis has brought us (However maybe this was something he watched with the young female students when he was working at a librarian - Doc. St. J. probably told him about them from his extensive study of young male subjects at the Koolaid University).
However, I would like to take this opportunity to attempt to correct your analogy. I believe that Mr. Gormley should be cast as the Road Runner, ol' Doc as the coyote, and Patty Boy provides the "quality" Acme Products.
St. John keeps trying to place all of these "bombs" provided by Patty Boy into the hands of Mr. Gormley, who is just trying to mind his own business and do his thing (you know, like leading a town). The only thing is, Pat and Doc's schemes just keep blowing up in their faces because Gormley is too smart for them.
As juvenile as it is, this really is a great analogy for the town and its colourful cast of characters right now. I mean, just like the crudely animated cartoons intended for children, these stories are presented to us on Pat's pseudo-MySpace page in an immature fashion that only a moron with the IQ of a six year old (about the age of the cartoon's intended audience and slightly younger than the boys that Doc prefers). It also shows, just like the insane doomed-to-fail-from-the-start plots of the coyote against the roadrunner, how desperate and pathetic Pat and Doc's ploys to take down Gormley are.
So, to Mr. Gormley, I say: "Happy running: Meep meep!"
To good ol' St. John: "Eh, What's up Doc?" Eureka! Maybe that's where he got it from!
Maybe "Pinky and the Brain" is the better analogy.
Pinky: "Gee Brain, what do you want to do tonight?"
The Brain: "The same thing we do every night, Pinky—try to take over the world."
Doctor St. John: "Gee Pat, what do you want to do tonight?"
Deangelis: "The same thing we do every night, Ed, to blame everything on Gormley."
(with apologies to actual brains).
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