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TPS Follows City Route – Considers Shutting Down Services
By Fletcher Word
Sojourner’s Truth Editor
It’s been nothing but bad news for both the city and the
school district over finances during the past few weeks and
in both cases local unions are trying to weather the fiscal
storm without having to pass on any hardships to their
memberships.
Both the administration of the City of Toledo and the Toledo
Board of Education reached dramatically similar assessments
of their bodies’ fiscal situations – bad and getting worse
in both cases.
In the matter of the City of Toledo, Mayor Mike Bell finds
himself in a $48 million hole for the 2010 fiscal year. Not
far behind sits the Toledo Public Schools that are
forecasting a budget deficit of $30.
“Fiscal emergency” is the term one of the mayor’s aides is
using to describe the state of the City’s finances. It’s a
term highly appropriate for the district schools as well.
Bell has put forth a number of remedies to bring the City
from the brink of financial ruin in order to all parties
share the pain. He has quickly learned that the police and
fire unions, in particular, are not in a sharing mood.
On February 25, the unions rejected Bell’s request for
concessions, according to the administration. Safety union
leaders offer a different take – they say they are willing
and available to meet with the administration in spite of
the tough language they are using about taking a hard line
on concessions.
Bell has released a plan calling for an eight percent
sports-and-events tax, a hike of the monthly trash fee to
$15 and eliminating the tax credit for Toledoans who work
outside the city. He is considering asking City Council to
declare “exigent circumstances” to force concessions from
the unions.
The Toledo Public Schools have not been quite so
all-encompassing in asking stakeholders to share the pain.
On the table are issues such as cutting pupil
transportation, decreasing the number of new textbooks
available to pupils, raising the price of school lunches,
eliminating school crossing guards and resource officers,
elimination elementary summer school and the district’s
subsidy for school uniforms.
Some of the bigger ticket items to cut include athletics and
closing Libbey High School, Toledo Technology Academy and/or
Early College High School.
To raise revenues, school officials are suggesting placing a
new levy on the ballot for the May 4 primary that would
raise as much as $12.5 million. If such a proposal is passed
by voters that would leave the board and administration with
a deficit of about $17 million.
There is one more meeting scheduled for the public – on
March 17 – before the board meets to make its final
decisions on budget cuts for the fiscal year on March 23.
What is clearly not on the table, based on the statements
uttered by outgoing superintendent John Foley and School
Board President Robert Vasquez, is any consideration of
serious cuts in the administration or of teachers’ salaries
and benefits. And what is just as clearly not on the table
is any public discussion of the negotiations with unions,
said Foley. Unlike the city, the school district will not be
using the media to try to put pressure on its bargaining
units. |
