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Westfield has never had a Proposition 2 1/2 override vote. It's a new experience for all of us. So it's probably a good idea for us to study and learn what other Massachusetts communities have done to win voter approval for an override.

Arlington is one such town. In fact, they've had two successful override votes, one in 2011 and one in 2005. In 2011, the citizens approved a $6.49 million override and in 2005 they approved a $6 million override. The dollar amount of these override is quite substantial when you consider the average of all the winning override votes from FY 2000 to FY 2010 brought in just $546,504. In the 2011 vote, Arlington's citizens voted to increase their average household tax burden by a whopping $450/year! That's no small feat to pull off in the middle of a very bad recession. Arlington's budget, $114.3 million, is very close to Westfield's. However, one critical difference between Arlington and Westfield is the median household income. In Arlington, it's $84,907 and only $51,535 in Westfield. We'll come back to this point later.

Two motions put forward by City Councilor Flaherty, related to the operation of Westfield's schools, were soundly rejected by other City Councilor's Thursday night. As expected, a third motion to cut the school department budget was withdrawn by Flaherty before coming up for debate. Regarding the withdrawn motion, Councilor Flaherty said there was "no need" as a result of "a lot of productive conversations we've had this week."

The agenda for Thursday's meeting is out and it contains a "motion of Councilor Flaherty relative to school budget appropriation." This agenda item appears to be Councilor Flaherty's follow-up to a failed attempt at the last City Council meeting to rescind $744,345 in school budget money that was originally approved back in July.

It's unclear what kind of support Councilor Flaherty has from other City Councilors. City Councilor James Brown, in a response to an email from Save Westfield Schools last weekend, wrote, "I will not be supporting any measure to 'recover the money', as this is not realistic nor a remedy that is available to the Council." Save Westfield Schools encourages other City Councilors to do the same.

Flaherty will also be introducing two additional proposals at Thursday's meeting related to the school budget:

• The first is a request for the City Council's evaluation of a Proposition 2 1/2 override "to fund school department performance-based salary increases in excess of 2 1/2% per year." Last week, in an online forum, Councilor Flaherty wrote, "I'm going to propose a Prop 2 1/2 override that is targeted at providing additional salary money for the school department (to pay for raises that exceed 2.5%)." In another comment he wrote, "I'm not proposing to support the measure, just to have the opportunity to get it on the ballot to give the voters a chance to let their feelings be known in a quantifiable way. I think the measure would fail by a huge margin."
  
  As we have pointed out, Flaherty's suggestion to that teacher salaries should not go above 2.5% is based on his very flawed analysis of how step increases affect the school budget. Other than for grandstanding, we see no value to this proposal whatsoever.
   
• His second proposal is "for approval of resolution to Westfield School Committee relative to negotiating and executing contracts that place further financial burdens on an already stressed school department budget." It's unclear what Councilor Flaherty has in mind here. We will have to wait and see.

We received word from a city official yesterday that the school department will be issuing a report to counter Flaherty's public statements about the school budget. We will post the report here as soon as it is made available to us.

This past weekend, Save Westfield Schools had a lengthy email exchange with Councilor David Flaherty regarding his statements that the new teacher's contract would cost "$8400 per person over the life of this agreement" and cost the city "over $5 million."

After last night's City Council meeting, in an email sent to all Westfield City Councilors, Councilor David Flaherty continued his serious accusations that the school department deceived the City Council and the public. He also implicated the teacher's union in a cover-up over what was in the contract. He wrote, "We got snookered, and the teachers union and the school department have mislead [sic] the public."

Flaherty also explicitly stated his intention to call for a vote to "recover the over $700,000 that the council approved for the school department based on intentionally misleading information provided us." The email contained a photocopy of the Memorandum of Understanding along with his opinion that there were costs negotiated into the contract that were hidden from the public to the tune of "over $5 million." As pointed out earlier by SWS, the WEA made the Memorandum of understanding public on their website since at least August 23rd.

You know that nice little lift you get when you find a wad of cash in a winter coat or spring jacket you haven't worn for months? It's a great feeling because for once you have money unexpectedly coming in instead of always going out. Well, that's about how we feel here at SWS because Westfield has a good-sized chunk of completely unanticipated cash coming its way! According to an aide to Senator Knapik, Peter Miller, Westfield will receive $1.4 million in funding by way of the federal government. And it couldn't have come at a better time with all the cutbacks and layoffs we've had as a result of withering tax revenues during this economic downturn.  Out of a total current budget of around $52 million, $1.4 million represents a very significant amount of money for us. Save Westfield Schools will be following up with school officials to determine what jobs will be saved by this windfall. According the an article appearing in the Boston Globe, the money should be hitting in a few weeks.

By a unanimous vote, 12-0, the City Council did the right thing and voted to place $744,345 in the budget to offset the money it cut back in June. Several councilor's mentioned the numerous emails they had received on the issue. So great job everyone!

There is much more work to be done, however.  Our schools are not out of the woods yet. We'll be counting on you to stay informed and involved in the process. Please check back here frequently to stay tuned on the latest news. We'll also be sending out periodic emails when there are other interesting developments. So if you haven't already, please sign up for our email updates.

Thanks again!