By Harry Fisher
The Greenwich Board of Education (BOE) is aggravating the residents of Greenwich with its recent board action, and it is up to the Republican led Board of Estimate and Taxation (BET) to be responsible. The trouble is the Democrat controlled BOE last Thursday interpreted a letter published in mid-May by three Republican members of the BET as an invitation to restore funds to the Fiscal Year 2026 (FY26) budget. Yes, this is messy.
At its last scheduled meeting of the school year on the 12th, the BOE voted to request that $ 1,957,842 be added to the Fiscal Year 25-26 (FY26) budget. While the motion originally was intended to allow Greenwich High School (GHS) start time to revert to 8:30, it was amended to allow the funds to be spent at the discretion of the BOE. The aggravating factor is that the town having accepted the change in start time, now has an expectation that could be reversed. I hope to dispel that.
To my knowledge, three things are true.
Never has a request for an interim appropriation been made prior to the start of the Fiscal Year, without a identified and specific need, and been lacking an account to which it would be applied.
According to the Town Attorney, neither the BET nor the Representative Town Meeting (RTM) can take action on the FY26 budget until the Fiscal Year starts July 1st.
Reading the Town Charter, it states that a request for an interim appropriation be made when there is an actual identified need (Article 2, Section 30b) and that the Comptroller must establish separate accounts for appropriations (section 29). The latter requires a description, and slush fund would not be acceptable.
So back to how this came about. Three Republican members of the BET, David Alfano, Nisha Arora, and Lucia Jansen, in a letter published in the Greenwich Free Press in mid May basically invited the BOE to request a restoration of part of the reduction to the BOE budget that they voted for early in April. This despite the fact that Greenwich Public Schools, enabled by recent state legislation, will be able to keep its expected surplus of $1.5 to 2 million instead of returning the funds to the town; an amount that has grown to $2 to 2.5 million.
The prospect of the BOE keeping surplus funds was not known when the BET made the decision in April to reduce the growth of the BOE budget by $4 million, bringing its growth from over 5% to 3%.
At a meeting Wednesday the 11th, prior to the BOE meeting, the purported chair of the BOE, Karen Hirsch, told me that she would be depending on the letter to make the request. I told her in no uncertain terms that was misguided.
I hope that the BOE will reverse its request for additional funds and that the residents of Greenwich be allowed to settle down and enjoy the late breaking summer.
Harry Fisher
BET Chairman
