Treuting Provides May 3 Public Statement

"After the governing body’s work session several weeks ago, there have been numerous comments and blogs about comments attributed to me.  I have asked Mayor Jones for a few minutes to set the record straight.

 I got on the city council because support to education was extremely lacking.  When I moved into the city in 1994, I was shown plans for the "the new high school."

After several years of no new high school, I refused to accept the explanation that there was no funding available to support education.  

At that time, the school budget accounted for only 16 percent  of the city budget and no one was able to find a way to start replacing the substandard school buildings or increase funding to education.  When an opening came on the city council, I fought to get appointed with my main goal of improving education.  

 Shortly after taking office, I led the charge with one other council member (and got the support of most of the governing body) and found a way to build the new high school and increase funding for education.  Since then, I led the charge to build Cougar Elementary, add the addition to the new high school (as we could not afford to build it as large as we needed originally, but built the infrastructure to support the addition once it was built), fund renovating/ expanding the middle school, and funding upper Cougar Elementary.  Besides the funding for buildings, I have fought to finance full-day kindergarten and increase overall school funding.  

 There is currently a revenue sharing formula between city and schools where schools get 57 percent of undedicated funds.  This accounts for 45 percent of the total city budget.  

 While fighting for more funding and new buildings for schools, I have DEMANDED improved quality in education for our students and improved efficiency in how city funding is spent.

 I also voted against reappointing several school board members who could not understand they must better account for how they spent the city's money and were not improving education in the system.  Those are strong words, but the children of the city need the best education possible if they are to be competitive in the world. As long as I am in office I will continue to fight for improvements in education.

 Comments I made at the budget meeting were taken out of context and out of reference to what was being discussed at the time.  I did say the comments attributed to me, but did not call the teachers in the school mediocre.

This is the context of what happened:  the governing body was confronted with a $1.2 million budget deficit for Fiscal Year 2012.  At the meeting, which was the final budget workshop, the city was looking at options.   It was decided that even though the city had a RIF of 17 employees and has 15 unfilled positions, the city would not give a pay increase to any city employee for Fiscal Year 2012.  

In addition, the city had to delay by about six months a salary adjustment for a EMT who had completed his training and certification in advanced life saving.  

This certification allows him to administer drugs as directed by communications with the hospital.  

The city found the money to fund this salary adjustment just prior to the budget workshop.  At the same time, schools are planning to give a 2.5 percent  pay increase to their employees and have added 16 positions to account for enrollment increase from 2,775 to 2,800.  Several representatives from the school board had commented that they had to give a raise because they could not recruit or retain the top teachers because salaries had eroded over the last several years.  

During the heated discussions, some of the suggestions to balance the last shortcomings in the budget were to raise taxes and initiate a one-week furlough for city employees.  

At this point, I stated I refused to support this and it was unfair to give no raises to city employees (third year in a row) and give them a furlough while giving teachers a 2.5 percent raise.  I stand by my comments but believe you need to understand the context that they were made."

 Regards,

 Bill Treuting

Manassas Park City Council