Hartford Advocate
Let Them Eat Cake
How much tax money does West Hartford 's
Board of Education spend on catered meals for itself? They won't tell us.
Thursday, March
27, 2008
The current
According to the board of education it's
still not enough to teach the kids, so they're requesting an extra $7.5 million
next year.
There's already grumbling in town about
how taxes, once again, are rising higher than inflation. And since the school
budget is over 60 percent of the town's total, much of that grumbling's directed toward school spending. It's
mostly off-the-record, though, because people who speak against school spending
are branded as selfish.
The budget's not presented in a
line-item form that lists individual expenses. So when we first heard
complaints about the board allegedly having breakfasts and lunches catered to
meetings on the taxpayers' dime, we didn't know if this was a big deal or not
because we couldn't go to the budget and read "Refreshments: X
dollars."
Are we talking "coffee and
donuts" or "five-course banquets"? A woman at the Avon Board of
Ed. said she usually makes coffee for meetings;
It'll be simple to ask the board of ed.
about this, we thought. Their offices are right on the top floor of town hall.
So we stopped by and were eventually referred to Chip Ward, the finance
director, who responded to our question with a friendly smile and the
suggestion that we make a Freedom of Information request. We handed over the
FOI letter we'd printed out in case he said that.
When writing FOI
requests, remember that if the person wanted to give you this info, you
wouldn't be jumping through FOI hoops to begin with. So you must word your letter carefully, lest you
leave a loophole through which the answer can escape.
Alas, we goofed. Our Feb. 6 letter
asked, among other things, the cost and number of catered meals provided at
board of education meetings. Ward's response, dated Feb. 14 and received Feb.
28, said: "Catered meals are not provided at board of education meetings.
They have been provided at an ad hoc basis at special meetings." Oops.
Ward mentioned one meal that cost $254.15, and was listed in the budget under
"Communications."
Our next letter on Feb. 29 was much
wordier and covered (we hope) all meetings having anything to do with the board
in any official capacity. Ward's response, dated March 5, said "please be
advised that as we are in the midst of budget preparation, it will take several
weeks to compile the information requested."
Which means we didn't
get it before the school budget hearing on March 27. So how much money are we
talking about here? We have no idea. ¦
Write to us at
editor@hartfordadvocate.com
or jabel@hartfordadvocate.com