What will happen Oct 26th remains unknown

The short version of the Joint Budget Subcommittee meeting held on Monday, Oct 17 (yes, even shorter than what I just published) I'll summarize as

• both sides shared info
• both sides learned of stuff they had not known before
• both sides remain apart, agreeing to disagree
• both sides have some passion about this topic (the shorter version I already published is sufficient for the "he said/she said" type recap, there is no value add in continuing this)

No one side can win this argument. The sad part is that there is a whole lot of good work on both sides that is now being put aside to make room for this discussion.

Bringing both sides back together to have a regular, civil, and detailed conversation is a must.

Two key points of the meeting:

• The Town Council approved a budget in June that they did not know contained money for an increase to cover the teachers contract
• The School Committee at the time of the budget did not have an agreement with the teachers and did not feel likely to have one but did have money in the budget to cover their 'known and anticipated' increases

Several events occurred since June to resolve the teacher contract while little or no communication was formally made between the Town Council and School Committee on this topic. All of which lead to the events of the contract announcement and the Council uproar... and leaves us where we are. Frustrated!

What will happen Oct 26th remains unknown.



Back story: The next Town Council meeting is Oct 26th. In case you missed it, the Town Council has re-opened the Fiscal Year 2012 budget in order to get the School Committee back to the table to talk since they did not show up to the prior Council meeting. At the close of this meeting (Oct 17th) the School Committee did say they would participate in the Oct 26th meeting.