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What Were They Thinking?
A Piece Offering
Dr.
CHuck Ormsby
08/02/06
 Events of the last six months in
North Andover have become very divisive and have
separated the town into two opposing camps. I write this
article as a piece offering to the “other” camp
… specifically, an offering of a piece of
advice.
To understand the advice I am about to offer, it is
important to review the history of events both prior to
this budget cycle and during the campaign leading up to
the recent and contentious special town meeting.
Let’s briefly touch on a bit of ancient history from
2002. In support of the $4 million override that year,
Superintendent William “Bill” Allen threatened
that one of the first cuts to be imposed, if the override
failed, was the elimination of Advanced Placement (AP)
Calculus.
Consider that the AP Calculus course had 30 bright,
focused and well-behaved students and one teacher —
probably the highest educational output per dollar spent
in the entire school system. There was only ONE reason
for putting AP Calculus at the top of the cut list …
to scare everyone. For me, I would stop heating the
schools before I would cut AP Calculus.
On the day AP Calculus was threatened, Bill Allen, the
administration, and the School Committee lost all claim
to being advocates for education or of having any moral
claim to our tax dollars.
The fact that these AP cuts were proposed is particularly
enlightening when one considers that AP courses do not
bear any unique costs and that cutting them would save
nothing. We would still need math teachers; these
students would still be in math classes; and nothing
would be saved by dumbing down the math they were being
taught. These facts are illustrated by subsequent
history: In my initial campaign for School Committee in
2003, I suggested a goal of doubling AP student
participation. Even with the failure of the 2002 override
and with minimal budget increases since then, we have
come close to accomplishing this goal in the 2005/06
school year.
A more visible scare tactic is the annual threat to fire
teachers. I won’t bore you with a history of
threatened classroom teacher cuts in North Andover over
the last five years, except to note that the threatened
cuts are typically between 25 to 50 teachers each year
with the actual cuts ranging from approximately no change
to a cut of a few classroom positions. The final cuts
seem to bear little relationship to the predictions made
by school officials.
Here is your program guide for the annual budget ritual:
The standard routine in the school department is to
develop a budget that is 8 to 16 percent higher than the
current year’s budget, call it a level-services
budget, and then, after the town manager suggests a
budget increase of 0 to 2 percent, do everything possible
to drive the parents of school-age children into
hysteria. It makes great theater but, in the end, it
destroys any chance to rationally deal with our
underlying budget problems. After a few years the routine
becomes predictable and tiresome.
This year our superintendent, Dr. Harutunian, began by
suggesting a budget increase of about 8 percent. I
recommended to the School Committee that we  should stop playing games and set
the increase at 2 or 3 percent — probably a little
high, but in the ballpark – so that we could spend
this spring actually trying to re-adjust our operations
to accommodate a more realistic increase - while
maximizing educational opportunities for our students.
The committee vote was 4-to-1 to go for the 8 percent
increase and try the hysteria card one more time. At this
point we might as well have quoted the Roman Emperors who
stood in the Coliseum and announced, “Let the games
begin!”
Quick flashback: One of the biggest factors driving
school department cost increases is the growth in labor
costs. And the current increases in labor costs are
driven by a disastrous labor contract with our teachers
ratified over my objections in May of 2005.
The last slide from my 7-slide briefing presented to the
School Committee immediately prior to the
committee’s vote is reproduced nearby. The briefing
projected that 23-to-25 teachers would have to be cut
each year if the contract was ratified. Chairman Dan
Murphy, Al Perry, Tim Pybus, and Bill Kelly ignored the
warning and voted to ratify the contract 4-to-2 (only Jim
Xenakis, representing the Board of Selectmen, and myself
voted no).
Let’s return to the events of this year. Is there
anything that school-spending advocates could have done
that would have been more illogical or more apt to
infuriate the citizens of North Andover than what they
did?
If I were to make a list of the proposals and
accompanying arguments that would be least likely to
succeed with the voters, I couldn’t have done better
than what was proposed by Peter Reed and TUFF —
Taxpayers United For the Future – and the other
advocates of higher spending.
Just to get the ball rolling and to get the hair up on
the backs of everyone’s necks, the big spenders
threatened to close the Stevens Memorial Library, move
all the books to the schools, and have the superintendent
and his staff move into the vacated library.
The plan, apparently, was not fully baked since a few
minor details seemed to have been overlooked.
First, the town’s resulting library would now be
hosted by the schools without adequate parking during
school hours, have no staff to operate it, and would be
unavailable during the hours when most people use the
library – after school and on weekends!
Curing these problems would cost more than any projected
savings … not to mention the cost of moving and
refurbishing the needed space.
Also, there would be no savings resulting from the
superintendent vacating his current office suite because
the 5-year lease signed by the School Committee three
years ago doesn’t expire for two more years. We
would be paying the rent anyway!
Finally, the Stevens Memorial Library was a gift to the
town from the Stevens Estate and the terms of the gift
require that it be used as a library. If the town stops
using it as such, it reverts to the Stevens Estate …
it couldn’t be used by the superintendent’s
staff anyway!
Well, now that we are all alert and pretty darn mad, what
do they come up with next? They suggest that all funding
for the Senior Center and Youth Center be eliminated. Now
that is bound to earn the schools numerous new friends.
What’s next? Imposing an annual tax on wheelchairs?
Since broad-based support for these hair-brained
proposals seemed pretty unlikely, desperate measures were
in order. It was time to get sneaky.
Here’s TUFF’s sneaky plan: Let’s propose,
just before town meeting, that the schools get $1.4
million more than the town can afford. We’ll call it
the “To Be Balanced” (TBB) budget plan.
We’ll keep it as quiet as possible and spread the
word just to school parents – using the kids’
backpacks, of course – that they must come to the
town meeting and support the TBB. Won’t those
taxpayer association guys and the few old geezers that
show up that night be surprised when they see all those
TBB buttons?
If asked, TUFF proposed to tell everyone not to
worry about how the town will pay for the TBB deficit.
But, in fact, they had a secret plan that they would
spring on the town later … shhhh … it involves
trash fees!
What a great idea. Let’s appropriate money we
don’t have for an institution that can’t stand
up to union demands for higher wages and above-market
health benefits. The only way this will pass is if the
scheme for trash fees is kept secret and town meeting is
packed only with those who are beneficiaries of the
larger school budgets.
So at North Andover’s annual town meeting this year,
TUFF’s secret plan was unveiled by Peter Reed …
immediately after the TBB budget was safely passed. And
what a silly plan it was. TUFF wanted to institute trash
fees to balance a budget that its supporters just
unbalanced!
Why was the trash plan silly? Because, in 2003 the Board
of Selectmen put a non-binding question on the ballot
that asked the voters: “Should the Town of North
Andover charge a fee for curbside trash collection?”
The result was a real squeaker. Those supporting a trash
fee numbered 649 (15 percent) and those opposed numbered
3643 (85 percent). What is it about “NO!” that
Peter Reed and TUFF don’t understand?
Clearly, Mr. Reed and TUFF knew that the town was
overwhelmingly against trash fees. Did they think the
town had changed its mind in just three short years? Of
course not. They didn’t care what the citizens
thought or what the citizens wanted. They believed that
by having the matter decided at town meeting instead of
the voting booth that they could get their way … the
citizens be damned!
In stepped Ted Tripp and the North Andover Taxpayers
Association (NATA … not to be confused with the
North Andover Teachers Association). TUFF should not
credit NATA with convincing the town that trash fees were
a bad idea. Clearly, the town already thought that. Ted
and NATA probably didn’t sway many opinions, but
they did make sure that everyone in town knew what Mr.
Reed and TUFF were trying to pull. The spotlights were
turned on bright and the town reacted.
Just like in poker, the School Committee went “all
in” on a bad hand and lost. As in poker, when you
are “all in” and you lose, you are “all
out.” In this case, the students are paying
the price for the worst imaginable political hijinks.
So here is the advice I promised: Stop your
relentless quest for higher taxes and fees and start
controlling costs. Focus on educational outcomes, not
spending. Embrace competition to ensure that our children
are well served.
And, finally, work to reverse as many cuts of classroom
teachers as possible. The games must end for the sake of
our students.
Dr. Ormsby was deposed as vice-chair of the North Andover
School Committee. He is a graduate of Cornell and has a
doctorate from MIT. If you have any questions or
comments, you can contact Dr. Ormsby via email: ccormsby@comcast.net
*Send your questions comments to ValleyPatriot@aol.com
The August, 2006 Edition
of the Valley Patriot
The Valley Patriot is a Monthly
Publication.
All Contents (C) 2006, Valley Patriot, Inc.
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