The tough road ahead

As
expected, last Thursday City Council turned down the Rochester school
district’s pleas to give it the funding it wants.

            The vote came on a technical point:
Mayor Bill Johnson’s budget gives the district $7 million less than the city
charter stipulates, and Thursday’s vote was on amending the charter. The vote
on the budget itself was to take place Tuesday night, June 22. But in reality,
Johnson’s recommendation has been approved.

            The vote wasn’t unanimous: three of
nine councilmembers wanted to give the district an additional $4.4 million. A
fourth, Tim Mains, argued for more funding but abstained from voting because he
is a city school principal.

            The discussion among councilmembers
was as emotional as the hearings on the school budget have been. And their
comments provided a chilling preview of what city residents may face in the
future.

            For the past several weeks, many critics
of the school budget have focused on whether the district uses its money
wisely. But at Thursday’s Council meeting, only one councilmember, the
northwest district’s Bob Stevenson, raised that issue. Stevenson, a former city
teacher, noted that despite reductions in enrollment, the district wants to
spend $24 million more next year. “I just don’t see the need for an increase of
$24 million,” he said.

            Most of the debate, however,
centered on the trap in which the city as a whole — City Hall and the school
district — finds itself: rising expenses, poverty, and service demands, and
declining tax base.

            Councilmember Brian Curran, Tim
Mains, and Adam McFadden argued for restoration of at least part of the mayor’s
cut. They said they had identified items in the city budget that could be cut
without raising taxes or seriously impacting services.

Curran noted
that in every Monroe County suburb (where voters, not town government,
approve local school-district funding), residents have approved tax hikes and
larger school budgets this spring. The average increase, said Curran, was 5.7
percent: “the same percent that the mayor would take away from the school
district.”

            Mains argued that education is as
important as fire and police, which Johnson exempted from cuts. “You can talk
about the number of kids going down and expenses going up,” said Mains. “Well,
let me tell you, the expenses are going to continue to go up, because the needs
are so great.”

            McFadden, citing the district’s
large African-American population, ticked off statistics: the large number of
young black men in prison, the high failure rate of black children in school.
“Eighty percent of children in special education are black,” said McFadden. “We
can find $18,000 to $40,000 a year to incarcerate black men, but can’t find a
dollar to educate them.”

            Both Gladys Santiago and Bill
Pritchard said they had agonized over their decision. Recalling a speaker at a
budget hearing who had threatened to vote against councilmembers who didn’t
support higher school funding, Pritchard said he would resign himself “if I
can’t be principled.”

            In the end, only Pritchard joined
McFadden and Curran and voted to provide more school funding.

            Ben Douglas, who chairs Council’s
finance committee (and who is a former School Board member), cited the budget
strains on both the city and the school district and said, “It looks like
there’s no end in sight.”

            “Nobody wants to make these cuts,”
said Douglas. “My kids are in city schools, and I don’t want to see them hurt.”

            Douglas reminded other
councilmembers that the revenue in Johnson’s budget includes $15 million in
state funds that city officials aren’t certain they’ll get. If that money
doesn’t come through, said Douglas, the city will not only have to cut what
Curran says it could but will have to cut much more.

Gladys
Santiago, whose children are city-school graduates and whose grandchildren will soon
attend city schools, said the decision “hurts like heck.” But, she said, “I am supporting
the mayor’s budget, because I am not willing to raise taxes, and I am not
willing to cut recreation programs.” Those programs, she said, are important to
the city’s poorest residents, who include many Latinos and African-Americans.

            And an intense, passionate Wade
Norwood spoke of a city government on the brink of a fiscal calamity and a
community whose needs are becoming overwhelming. “I remind you that I am the
parent of city school children,” he said, “and I see the needs of the schools
every day.”

            But, he said, “there is no way in
God’s green earth” that the city can solve all of the problems. “I honestly
believe that the estimate we have made that we will receive in state funding is
more than a gamble. It is a dangerous gamble.” The mayor, he predicted, will
have to make still more cuts in city services “just to preserve the fiscal
health of this city.”

            The needs of the city and its
residents are severe, said Norwood. In his own neighborhood, he said, residents
are facing declining property values and rising property taxes. Children in
some neighborhoods walk down streets with boarded up-houses and trash-strewn
lots. Some are afraid to walk to school.

            “We have families who can’t afford
to pay their RG&E bill,” said Norwood. “The hurt is coming home.”

            Norwood, Curran, and Council
president Lois Giess said the community needs to join together in its struggle
and find new solutions. “We really need to find a way to get past this
us-versus-them attitude,” said Curran. “We all represent the same people. We are the same people. The children in the
city schools are the same children who are in the neighborhoods we are trying
to serve.”

            For both the city and the school
district, said Council president Lois Giess, the pain is likely to get worse.
“Just yesterday,” said Giess, “the House approved another corporate tax bill,”
giving businesses additional tax cuts. “This year we — the city, the school
board — are at the bottom of the heap,” said Giess. “We are not only picking
up the scraps from the floor, we are not even at the table.”

            “It is absolutely critical that we
start thinking in a new way,” said Giess.

This article appears in Jun 23-29, 2004.