To the editor:

Watching government and politics in Tiverton — probably like every smallish town — can be frustrating.  At the state level or in a large city, more people are paying close attention, including a larger number of journalists, which creates a sort of community memory … or at least enough fear of one that the excuses of the past won’t be recycled after somebody exposes them.

With the ever-growing surplus fund of Tiverton’s School Department though, the same talking point comes back year after year.  Despite promises all last winter and spring that the school committee was going to spend the $3,454,163 that it’s holding in its account, the Tiverton School Department ended the year with $4,429,210. That’s a 28% increase.

And here come the talking points, as reported in the Newport Daily News by Marcia Pobzeznik (“Tiverton School Department’s fund balance raises eyebrows,” February 15, 2018).  School Committee Chairman Jerome Larkin tells Pobzeznik that “all capital items have been paid out of the reserve account for the past six years.” Vice Chair Sally Black says the committee “didn’t ask the town for any money” to pay for a wastewater plant required for three of the schools.

The use of that money actually isn’t anything to brag about.  As I highlighted in a report for the Budget Committee last April, because the School Committee was keeping its millions in a slush fund, rather than following the appropriate steps for a capital fund, it actually cost the town nearly a quarter million dollars. A state official told me that the $688,000 project could have been “fast tracked” through RIDE and, at the 35% reimbursement rate, would have produced $240,800 in revenue for the town instead of $0.

The draft audit covering the year that ended June 30, 2017, which the town treasurer has been preparing to release. seems to indicate that no such account existed even by the end of last June.  Yet, this year, Tiverton taxpayers will have to come up with $1,342,613 to pay principal and interest on debt the town had to accept in order to repair the high school and middle school.

The school department could almost pay the entire debt payment with just its annual surplus — that is, it could take the debt payment off the back of the town with just the money that the School Committee decides not to spend each year.

Justin Katz

Tiverton

Mr. Katz is a member of the Budget Committee; his writing can be found at TivertonFactCheck.org and OceanStateCurrent.com.