West Bend Schools Thinking About Operating Budget Referendum

And here we go.

The first draft of proposed 2010-11 budget recommendations for the West Bend School district began taking shape Tuesday night during a meeting of the Citizen Financial Advisory Committee.

   Among the listed possible budget recommendations is an April 2010 operating referendum.

   “I am not saying that we are going to recommend it,” said CFAC chairman Mark Lustig. “But it is something we have to throw out on the table.”

   CFAC member John Grundahl said his preference would be that the referendum exceed the revenue limit for any subsequent year of less than two-thirds funding by state aid. The amount requested would be the difference between two-thirds of the current revenue limit and state aid received.

I heard rumblings of this a while ago.  In the aftermath of a 10.9% tax increase and a teachers’ union that is asking for salary increases and domestic partner benefits (BTW, the domestic partner benefits have apparently been dropped, but we don’t yet know what the district gave them for it), some folks are seriously thinking of asking the voters for another referendum to jack up taxes.

For the uninitiated, let me break it down a bit.  The Citizen Financial Advisory Committee (CFAC) is a committee of folks who are tasked with advising the school board on financial issues.  Who is on it?  How do you get on it?  That’s a bit opaque.  If you go to the district’s website, it says to contact Brian Dasher, but he’s out on an indefinite leave of absence.  I do know many of the members and the vast majority of them are basically hacks for the school district.  Teachers, union folks, etc… While CFAC was purportedly set up to be a citizen group to advise the district, you will find very few members who don’t have a financial stake in spending more of our money in the district. 

So that’s the game… CFAC is set up to “advise” the district on financial matters.  A strong majority of them are vested in the district taxing and spending more money.  Word from their meeting last month is that the administration suggested that they would not put forth an operating budget referendum unless CFAC (wink, wink) recommended it.  Now we have the recommendation being floated.  It’s a farce. 

The district should immediately put the kabash on any idea of another referendum, but I suspect that they won’t.