After a roundabout discussion that was at times noisy and a bit contentious, the Weston Board of Finance approved funding for a second school resource officer (SRO). In a split vote, the board approved a $120,000 supplemental appropriation request from the Weston Board of Police Commissioners for the position.
The $120,000 appropriation includes $77,312 for the police department for the new officer’s salary. The remaining $42,688 is for the new hire’s employee benefits package. The town currently has one SRO in the department.
The special appropriation was passed in a 4 to 2 vote, with board members Rone Baldwin and Melissa Koller voting against it.
By an identical vote, the board gave a thumbs-up to a $38,220 appropriation for overtime costs for police coverage of the town’s Mile of Safety, where the school campus is located.The cost for this service is shared by the Board of Education and the police department. This appropriation was broken down to $22,932 for the school board and $15,288 for the town.
Cost sharing
Baldwin and Koller, who voted against the $120,000 special appropriation, said they favored the second SRO in principle. However, Baldwin called for more cost-sharing for the position by the police and the school board.
Koller said both the SRO and Mile of Safety appropriations should have been subject to a town-wide vote.
Baldwin said the second SRO was proposed soon after the budget cycle closed and before the new fiscal year on July 1 had begun. “I think this board should have a very unsympathetic reaction to special appropriations that aren’t self-funded in part by those areas in the budget,” he said. “I contrast this with what we saw last year with respect to the out-of-district tuition issue. We approved a $1 million appropriation and we did it relatively quickly. Part of the compelling case was that we saw the Board of Ed had looked to make cuts to offset half a million dollars of that excess cost.”
Red flag
Baldwin suggested the school board and police, combined, should fund 25% of the cost with the special appropriation funding the remainder. He also suggested the police department’s budget increase this year was already out of sync with other town spending.
“Whenever you see an area that’s so ahead of the town overall, it’s a red flag and a cause for concern,” he said.
First Selectman Chris Spaulding then rushed to the conference table to respond. “Can I clarify that? The police actually came up with a flat budget [for the upcoming year],” Spaulding said. “Because we reorganized how we were accounting internally for different departments, we added a lot of software and other things to their budget. So you’re not looking at apples to apples here.”
Finance board member Dick Bochinski said the amount, and where the funds would be allocated, were determined in earlier deliberations. “The agreement was that it would be entirely within the police budget,” said Bochinski. “That employee, the SRO, would be an employee of the PD who reports directly to the chief. That somehow satisfied everyone.”
Finance board member Bob Ferguson agreed there should be more cost sharing in the future. “I think Rone is 100% correct that security for the schools should be a shared expense,” he said. “We should look for that in future budget cycles.”
Baldwin argued that there should be offsets in the education and police budgets. “Things come up all the time during a year, and it’s important for the leadership of our boards to make tradeoffs … to re-prioritize to deal with new issues that come up,” he said. “The big issue I have is that I don’t see the police and the Board of Ed looking for other offsets to fund what I think is a very important priority.
“That is the fiscally responsible way to deal with special appropriations,” he added. “It’s the start of the fiscal year and there’s plenty of opportunity to adjust spending budgets as the year goes on.”
Double entry
Finance board member Allan Grauberd raised the thorniest funding dilemma by calling for the deduction of $35,000 from the $120,000 supplemental request. He said the town previously appropriated $35,000 to the police department to purchase information-technology services from the Board of Education. Soon thereafter, however, the town hired an IT specialist as a full-time employee serving all town departments.
“That very same FTE (full-time employee) can now be utilized by the police department,” Grauberd said. “In effect, the police department doesn’t need the 35K to pay the Board of Ed.”
Spaulding pledged to resolve the funding discrepancy and school board Chairman Gina Albert said the Board of Education could find $17,500 in its budget to fund the SRO. Grauberd ultimately supported the original $120,000 supplemental request.