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ESSEX
APRIL 9, 2015
Vol. 35, No. 14
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Prsrt Std ECRWSS U.S. Postage Paid Permit No. 266 Essex Junction, VT 05452 Postal Patron-Residential
School budgets up for vote
Slight increases for U46 and village districts By JOE CARDELLO The Essex Reporter
On Tuesday the budgets for the Essex Junction and Union #46 School Districts will be put to a vote. The April 14 vote will be held from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Village residents will file their ballots at Essex High School and Town resident voting will be held at Essex Middle School. Both school districts are proposing budgets that would increase education spending over the current fiscal year. Increases are derived in part from the rising cost of healthcare and special education. The Union #46 School Board has proposed an FY16 budget of
$24,465,011 (1.9 percent increase) for Essex High School (EHS) and an $8,582,880 (1.1 percent increase) budget for the Center for Technology, Essex (CTE). Voters will also be asked to appropriate 1 percent of the EHS budget for the Capital Reserve Fund. Equalized student spending comes in at $16,098.29, which is more than $1,000 under the excess spending threshold of $17,103. Salaries and benefits make up about 70.6 percent of the proposed budget for FY16. Due to staffing adjustments, forecasted investments for salaries in FY16 decreased by more than $100,000. Staffing adjustments include the addition of a literary specialist and school counselor. The reduction of staff included the elimination of the AFJROTC program and related staff – a decision, according to CCSU Executive Director of Operations and Chief Financial Officer Grant Geisler, made by the U.S. Air Force. This caused a $178,324 dollar decrease in salaries and benefits. The FY16 CTE budget proposal shows that salaries and
– See JUNCTION on page 3a
Rocky Leary, center, has sold Rocky’s New York Pizza and Ice Cream on Park Street to Duncan Harvey, right, who owns Central Beverage and Five Corners Beverage. Nick Safford, left, will continue on as manager of Rocky’s. JASON STARR
Rocky’s relationships Restaurant sold to friend, fellow Essex business family By JASON STARR The Essex Reporter
Rocky’s will remain. But Rocky Leary is a Florida man now. The patriarch of Rocky’s New York Pizza and Ice Cream on Park Street has sold the venerable business after 21 years and is living full-time with his wife and two children on the North Florida coast. He has plans to open a new restaurant there. Outside of sporadic trips back to Vermont
to continue supporting the charitable events he’s participated in throughout his career, as well as as-needed consultations with Rocky’s new ownership, Leary is saying good-bye to the community. “I have been blessed,” said the Brooklyn, N.Y., native whose given first name is Terrence. “Our feeling of community all started in Vermont and we’re going to bring it with us. We’ll be part of the community and have fun in the community wherever we go.” With children ages 8 and 12, Leary is laying down new roots in a town called Ponte Verde. “They are building relationships down there that I didn’t
– See ROCKY'S on page 4a
Town district balances prudence and priorities BY MATTHEW PREEDOM For the Essex Reporter
If a budget is about priorities, then the Essex Town School District has a clear vision of what its are. “We are a human services organization and our mission is to provide education to the kids of Essex Town,” said school board chair-person Kim Gleason “Our money should be invested in our human resources and it is.” Indeed, the top two cost drivers are in employee compensation and health insurance, but those investments in people yield big dividends for the community. Eighty-six-and-one-half cents of every dollar in the 2016 budget will go directly toward classroom instruction. The budget contains $21,618,989 in operating expenditures with an additional $125,000 capital reserve fund contribution which is approved separately by the voters. That represents an increase of 3.1 percent (or 3.8 percent with the approval of the reserve) over last year’s budget and translates to an additional $29.70 per $100,000 of assessed value (or $36.80). The per-pupil spending for FY16 is projected to be $14,052 (or $14,153). Either mark is expected to be well below the state’s penalty threshold. Gleason described the board’s approach: “Every year when we begin the budget process, we ask [superintendent] Mark Andrews to look at the goals for our district and see where students are meeting those goals and where some are falling short so we can see where the need is. We then try to align our budget to provide support to those students.” The school board has provided over $800,000 new dollars to fill specific needs like universal preschool access, additional special education staff, and new literacy and math specialists to help struggling students. Andrews said that “we do a really good job with the roughly eightypercent of our students who are hitting the mark and we have a lot of resources to help the ten-percent who struggle the most, but for those kids in the middle, who just need a little help to reach proficiency but don’t need special education, those kids are the ones we don’t have a robust system for. “That’s why we need the literacy and math specialists, to help those kids reach proficient levels with the appropriate level of help.” The goal of the district and its budget is to provide the resources necessary for every student to succeed “at a cost we can afford,” said Gleason. Vice-chairperson Dan House pointed out that the district has a good track record for controlling costs and this budget is likewise responsible: “Our average budget increase over the last five years is 1.6 percent, but we’ve done much better than that. If you look at where we were five years ago and where we are now, we’ve spent roughly two-million dollars less than if we had had a steady increase of 1.6
– See TOWN on page 4a
Smooth sailing for village budget Voters back trustees’ consolidation plans By JASON STARR The Essex Reporter
Village consultant Julie Campoli speaks at the Annual Village Meeting last Wednesday at Essex High School while moderator Steve Eustis, center, and village president George Tyler, look on. STEVE MEASE
Unanimity ruled the day last week when about 120 Essex Junction voters gathered for the Annual Village Meeting at Essex High School. Nearly everyone in the room got behind a budget for the upcoming fiscal year that Village President George Tyler described as a “new beginning” in the relationship between the village and its underlying Town of Essex. Along with the Town of Essex budget voters approved in March, the new village budget unites the two municipal street departments as well as their stormwater management obligations. “What this does is say, ‘all the streets and sidewalks in the community are everyone’s responsibility,’” Tyler explained. The merge follows the recent unification of
the town and village administrative offices and tax collections. Future collaborations in land-use planning and finance are now being discussed. After a history of failed wholesale merger and separation attempts, this piecemeal approach has met little resistance. “I appreciate the fact that (the Village Trustees) ran for office saying they were interested in doing this,” said resident Greg Morgan. “It’s very complicated, but they’ve been able to move to efficiencies that I think we will realize. We don’t see that too often in government where people follow through.” The approved budget is for $3.8 million — a 7.4 percent increase. But primarily because of an $840,000 shift in village street costs to the town’s general fund (which village taxpayers also support), the actual amount to be raised by village taxpayers is decreasing by about $450,000, village officials said. The average village taxpayer will see a $124 reduction in village taxes as a result. When combined with the tax liability associated with
– See MEETING on page 3a