March 24, 2005
Bridgewater
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Joseph Gillis Jr.
You can do something!
At last night's Bridgewater-Raynham School Committee Meeting, I made a motion (seconded for discussion by Mark Oliari) to request the B-R Educators Association (Teachers Union) to come back to the negotiating table to discuss insurance costs. Specifically, based on the premise that about 90 teacher positions are proposed to be added to the B-R System and thus the Union through the planned FY06 budget, that a discussion about reducing the district share of insurance costs from 88% to 80% should take place.
While some of these teachers may technically be re-hires from prior teaching levels, to the union they would be new positions since they did not exist in November 2004 when the contract was ratified. A request to re-open discussions based on adding about 25% to union membership is the responsible thing to do.
After a spirited discussion on the issue, my motion failed. However, this proposal is still public. I believe that coming to an agreement on this issue will: (a) move forward with improvment in the B-R Schools with a sharing of the costs; (b) demonstrate to the public at large that the unions recognize the public-perception side of any discussion on municipal finance.
As I stated in a previous story, for Bridgewater taxpayers the effect of the increase in Capital Debt costs will result in a 4.2% increase in property tax. To fund the $3.1M operations in the "Admin Recommend" would be a 14.2% increase in property taxes. So, if your house is valued at $360,000 and our current tax rate is $9.76/thousand, your tax bill is $3,513.60 for FY05. The increases would be $148 and $499 respectively.
