Town of Braintree

complaining is so last year

i am wondering if there is anyone in town that is not aware by this time that the school department occupies 50-55% 0f the yearly budget.as far as this continuing to be the only reason
for bashing them in total,consider this:on an individual basis alone which department do each and everyone of you believe should occupy more and why?consider it for a moment,then put thoughts into words here or another thread if you wish,and the discussion can be open to anyone for debate. the idea that school system in town is greedy smacks of self indulgent hooey
and the poorest form of debate.if you don't believe the school system matters
move or pull your children out of the school system and send them to private
or parochial school.at least be willing to do that if you are going to spend so much of your precious time bashing it.the size of the department does not make it exclusive from others when it comes to bringing up the inherent flaws that exist in all others,just that the school system does not effect your life safety issues if you deny it a raise,or will threaten to not plow roads,answer water and sewer complaints,health or building inspections.there is much work to be done and complaing about an inadequate system has never been known to solve these problems to the satisfaction of all parties.ruminate on this issue at length and please try and be constructive.thank you.


By THO

My Read on Budgets

Each department has it's own area of responsibilities and a budget to service those responsibilities. Department heads prepare their budgets each year (as is their job)and submit it for approval. If they ask for more than the fincom's guidelines, they are open for more serious scrutiny by the fin com and usually by Town Meeting. If the School Department budget this year amounts to just under $45,000,000 out of a total town budget voted last May of nearly $85,500,000 - the schools received just under 53% of all town tax appropriated dollars. Last year, the shcool budget was also $45,780,202 out of a total town budget of 82,036,613. That was 55.80% of the total town budget.
BLAME if blame is the appropriate word should not be directed at Dr. Kurzberg, the School Committee or even the Finance Committee per se each year concerning the budget from my perspective. Dr. Kurzberg and the SC are doing what they have responsibility to do - ask for what they believe is needed, (not wanted)to run their schools. Shame of us Town Meeting Members (myself included although I did my best to expose this issue or that issue, but it fell on relatively deaf ears from my colleagues)who accept the FinCom's recommendation to fund this amount or that amount. Asking for funds each year and actually getting what is asked for usually are differing sums. These people are just doing their jobs.
If any of you have visited a finance committee meeting to watch them in action, there are some very biased pro school department members from their lobbying support offered up to colleagues. Biased, I say, because of the never ending pursuit of bucks for the school department.

By TMM3

% Total Budget Each Dept Gets

Using FY05 FinCom book as source, I can give you the following % amounts depts got for this year out of total budget:
Schools - 53%
Police - 7%
Fire - 6.8%
Personnel - .4%
Highway - 1.8%
Waste Disposal - 1.6%
Libraries - 1.2%
Parks & Rec - .8%
Debt & Interest Budget - 4.1%
Pension/Employee Benefits Budget - 6.8%
Insurance Premiums - .5
Planning/Conservation - .3%
Engineering - .4%
Blue Hills School - 1.5%
Health - .4%
Selectmen - .4%
Inspections - .5%
All other departments are less than .4% to make up 100%
Hope this helps your curiosities.

By TMM12

Thank You, TMM 12

Curiosty satisfied, but knowledge still lacking. I guess without knowing what would be acceptable percents of the total for a town our size this knowledge isn't the help I felt it would be. It raises more questions though. Since our pension plan is not fully funded, I wonder just how much of our budget we expend each year. If you look to the percentages we spend as much for pensions as we do to fund our active fire dept. And if we are spending roughly 7%, or $5,600,000. for our police dept. possibly an earlier suggestion by another party, re: making the plaza responsible for their own policing, would be a good idea. They must add to our burden for coverage considerably. We are a hamlet by night and a metropolis by day and that colors our budget woes, maybe we should look to deminishing our costs for certain private entities. I realize they too pay real property and personal property taxes; but are they paying their fair share? A presence that was designed to shift the burden of taxes off the homeowner may now be costing our quality of life dearly.

By money matters