NORWALK, Conn. Norwalk Mayor Richard Moccia, an ex-officio member of the Board of Education, delivered the following comments to the board Tuesday night:
I assume that you are going to come to the Board of Estimate and ask the Board of Estimate for a $4 million special appropriation to fill the gap that we have, or you have identified. Then that will require a two-thirds vote of the Common Council. I suggest that before you go to either board or to my office that you have some specific ideas in mind as to how you are plan to correct the situation in the future and how you plan on addressing it because I do not believe the Board of Estimate will grant the $4 million to cover this year without reducing next year's budget. I just don't see it happening. It's not fair to the taxpayers, it's not fair.
I just want to say that whatever the reason this happened it cannot happen again. I will work with you. I will lobby to get the Board of Estimate and the council to give you the $4 million special appropriation. I will do the best I can. Contrary to some things in the press I do not control every board and every commission. If I did I would probably be in Washington, but I will do my best on that end. It's going to require a lot of hard work on the part of the people on this board to convince the Board of Estimate and the Common Council that you have made some changes.
As was discussed in the press, when things got a little heated, the finger pointing has to be over. No more finger pointing other than pointing to areas in the budget. I just want to say that other than I believe there are areas in this budget that have duplication of expenses, duplications of, you've got more blue and green notes here, where we see in one line item, you've got maintenance for HVAC, on another line item you have maintenance for other air conditioning. There's a lot of duplication of accounts here, that have the same amount monies going for the same purposes. You spent $750,000 for air conditioning people, the HVAC people, electricians, and total salaries and yet we still have $5 and $600,000 going outside for contracts to do electrical and HVAC work.
There's got to be areas that those monies can be consolidated and more attention paid. We seem to look at the big numbers all the time and what I have been advocating for years is start to look at the $150, the $200, and the $300,000 items that are in this budget, that can't be, but that seem to be duplicated, and that there has to be better monitoring and control of how that money is spent. Yes, I know it's the oldest cliché, $100,000 adds up to millions and that starts to be real money. No. We've heard that before.
That's when I think you have to start looking at this budget, start looking at the areas, not just with how many teachers you have, how many administrators. That's important. There's a lot of areas that we can combine and reduce those line item budgets, and ask some questions on. I think that's important that you do that. But I will say it publicly, I will support the special appropriation for the $4 million for the Board of Estimate and the Common Council, with some of the caveats that I have just given.
Click here to follow Daily Voice and receive free news updates.
