Salary Discussion Request Leads to Partisan Debate Over Increases

The Board of Education’s budget proposal for the 2011-12 school year representsa record low in Southington, with a request for just a 1.9 percent increase, but a $12,000 item within the budget continues to draw ire from some local officials because of raises for a couple of non-union district administrators.

Raises of 6.6 percent given to Director of Business and Finance Sherri-Lin DiNello and 7.6 percent given to Personnel Manager Kimberly Hunt were brought into the spotlight again this week when Council Member Anthony D’Angelo asked for it to be added to the agenda as a special discussion during Monday’s Council meeting.

“I’ve gotten a lot of calls and had many conversations with both school employees and taxpayers who are concerned with raises that large in an extremely tough economy,” said D’Angelo, a Democrat. “As town councilors, we are in charge of the budget as a whole for the town and a discussion would simply allow us to see if there’s anything we can do.”

The raises were first drawn into question in early February when Democrat John Moise questioned them during a Board of Finance hearing regarding the education budget proposal.

The raises were part of just a 2 percent increase among all non-union administrators, Board of Education Chairman Brian Goralski said. Furthermore School Superintendent Joseph V. Erardi Jr. said the raises were given because both Hunt and Dinello were “comparatively drastically underpaid” when looking at the salaries for colleagues in similar positions within other districts.

[A list of comparable positions in other towns and their salary levels is available in today’s article “Inside the Numbers” and can be accessed by clicking on the link.]

D’Angelo’s request to add a discussion to the agenda came during the Monday Town Council meeting, and caught other councilors off guard, said several Republican councilors. Town Council Chairman Edward Pocock III said the manner in which the request was made was inappropriate, and that was why it was voted down.

“I called it a stunt because that’s exactly what it was,” Pocock said. “If the issue had merit, we would certainly have added it but the Board of Education is an elected body and under state statute we don’t have control over line items.”

Pocock said he was not aware that a request would be made and members of the Board of Education were also not notified of the request. He added that he understands the nature of the request – he said in a tough year, there are taxpayers who certainly wouldn’t be happy with such budget increases – but it’s also inappropriate to argue over a $12,000 line item when the board presented a record low budget.

Pocock said if members of the Board of Finance or Town Council don’t like the decision, they have the right to “cut $12,000 from the Board of Education’s $80 million budget,” but ultimately the board could restore it by transferring from other line items.

The request had also caught members of the Board of Education off guard, Goralski said, and the board would have been happy to discuss the issue if invited in advance to the meeting.

“If Tony truly wanted to talk about the actions and decisions of the Board of Education, he would have requested the item as a formal agenda item and invited us to participate in the discussion,” Goralski said. “The method used, adding it during the meeting, seems politically motivated and orchestrated for that purpose.”

D’Angelo, whose request was supported by the three other Democrats on the council, said it came because of recent conversations he’d had with taxpayers, and added that it’s not the first time that the board has awarded significant raises or bonuses to non-union employees. He noted that five years ago, DiNello received an honorarium of $5,000.

The discussion was supposed to serve as the start of a “fact-finding effort” to determine if there was any action the council could take to change the wages, D’Angelo said. He said the council has input on union-based contracts with teachers and administrators and feels it should have had more input in this decision.

“This isn’t over,” he said. “The topic is not finished and I will not accept ‘that can’t be done’ as an answer,” he said.