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Kevin, I commend you for having the will to perform this analysis. But from the tone of this article it leads me to beleive that you have a negative bias toward the school department, especially the administration and are turing a blind eye toward Mayor Avedisian, his administration and some members of the city council who have supported a city budget over the past years that has resulted in continued tax increases to support increases in city spending.

I have been compiling data related to the city and school budgets for the past ten years and after analyizing the data I can tell you that school spending is not responsible for the annual tax increases over the past years. Rather if it was not for the school department consolidation and budget reductions over the past 8 years, the City of Warwick would be in serious financial peril.

If the city had taken the same approach as the schools regarding healthcare contracts and state pension reforms, many of the tax increases over the last five years would not have been necesasry or the funds could have been allocated toward many of the programs in the city that have been eliminated or the cpaital expense projects and infra-structure repairs that have ceased over the last 8 years.

In fact based on Mayor Avedisian's 2014 proposed budget since 2008 fiscal year the overall number of local tax dollars allocated to the school budget is $5,518,277. The number of local tax dollars allocated to the city budget is $35,642,138 or over 6 times the amount given to schools.

In addition over that same time period overall school spending is $-1,080,732, below 2008 FY levels. Read that sentence agin. School spending is one million dollars below where it was 6 years ago. City spending has increased $12,172,074 and is at an all-time high.

In 2007 63.9 percent of property tax dollars were allocated to the school budget and 36.1 to the city. That's around the norm based on the testimony from educational experts as a result of many more employees (teachers) on the school side of the budget than on the city side. Based on the mayor's 2014 budget the allocation now stands at 54.4 percent to schools and 45.6 percent to the city. Practically even.

Think about that for a second and then try to understand why the school deparment has had to close 4 elementary schools over the last few years, eliminate the transportation department and with it over 60 positions and now needs to consolidate at the secondary level.

Also consider this, why I was Chairman of the School Committee in 2006 bonds were approved by Warwick citizens authorizing $25 million in school capital improvments, including fire safety mandated changes. Eight years later because of the financial condition of Warwick these mandates still have not been completed. Why you might ask? Becuase the city didn't have the capability of paying the principal and debt on the bonds.

Yet city pension and healthcare costs have doubled in the last ten years and most of the new tax dollars collected and given to the city have gone towards these expenses.

For example, since 2007 the city budget has been allocated 87 percent of all new property tax dollars collected in Warwick, leaving schools with only 13 percent.

My point of this discussion is to lead you to the fact that you also need to consider the city side of the budget when you look at the overall fiscal picture in Warwick.

I would be happy to sit down with you and share my ten years worth of city budgetary information with you. Contact me at cushmanr@cox.net if you are interested in my offer.

From: URI student aims to uncover multiple salary issues in Warwick schools

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