Town Budget Proposal Stands at $32 Million


WINSTED — After two weeks of intense discussion, the Winchester Board of Selectmen voted Wednesday night to send a proposed 2007-08 budget of nearly $32 million to a town meeting scheduled for May 7, in which taxpayers will be allowed to vote on cuts to line items before sending the budget to referendum for final approval.

The budget includes $12,266,943 for municipal departments, representing a 21.26-percent increase over the current year, along with a $19,715,391 allocation for the Board of Education, representing a 4.45-percent increase. The total budget of $31,982,334 represents a 10.3-percent increase over the current year’s $28.99-million budget.

Though much of the budget negotiation has gone smoothly, controversy erupted this week as selectmen began taking aim at town departments. Winsted Independent Party members Russell Dutton Buchner and Art Melycher first asked for a $75,000 decrease in police overtime, which is budgeted at $95,000. The selectmen questioned the need for that much overtime and said it was a management problem within the department.

The proposed cut in police funding failed, but on Tuesday Buchner and Melycher teamed up to cut the Winsted Recreation Department, voting to reduce Director Alesia Corso’s salary by more than $25,000 and reducing her hours from 40 to 19 per week. The cut was approved by a 3-2 vote, with Selectman Barbara Wilkes voting in favor and Republicans David Cappabianca and Jay Case voting against. Democrats Candy Perez and Mayor Maryann Welcome abstained on the vote.

Despite calls from several residents Wednesday to reconsider the cut to recreation, selectmen were not convinced. They also cut $300,000 from a proposed $20 million school budget, holding the proposed increase to less than 5 percent.

Though the proposed municipal budget includes a 20-percent increase over the current year, Town Manager Owen Quinn said this week that the town needs the money. "There is no fat on this budget," he said. "There is nothing on the town side. Ten years ago the Board of Education budget was just a bit higher than the town side and now it’s about double ours. And is education any better than it was 10 years ago? Most likely not."

Quinn said the overall budget is being proposed with uncertainty because towns still don’t know what state Legislators will do this year with their funding to municipalities. "I think there will be changes and I think everybody is at a point where they’re looking to see what is going to happen. It will affect ECS [the state’s Education Cost Sharing grant to towns] and the Board of Education, which is the biggest portion of the budget. I think the municipal budgets have never been as up in the air and scary from a local perspective."

The final selectmen’s vote on Winsted’s proposed budget came Wednesday night, with the board voting 4-2 to send the proposal to a town meeting Monday, May 7, 7 p.m., at The Gilbert School.

Latest News

South Kent School’s unofficial March reunion

Elmarko Jackson was named a 2023 McDonald’s All American in his senior year at South Kent School. He helped lead the Cardinals to a New England Prep School Athletic Conference (NEPSAC) AAA title victory and was recruited to play at the University of Kansas. This March he will play point guard for the Jayhawks when they enter the tournament as a No. 4 seed against (13) Samford University.

Riley Klein

SOUTH KENT — March Madness will feature seven former South Kent Cardinals who now play on Division 1 NCAA teams.

The top-tier high school basketball program will be well represented with graduates from each of the past three years heading to “The Big Dance.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Hotchkiss grads dancing with Yale

Nick Townsend helped Yale win the Ivy League.

Screenshot from ESPN+ Broadcast

LAKEVILLE — Yale University advanced to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament after a buzzer-beater win over Brown University in the Ivy League championship game Sunday, March 17.

On Yale’s roster this year are two graduates of The Hotchkiss School: Nick Townsend, class of ‘22, and Jack Molloy, class of ‘21. Townsend wears No. 42 and Molloy wears No. 33.

Keep ReadingShow less
Handbells of St. Andrew’s to ring out Easter morning

Anne Everett and Bonnie Rosborough wait their turn to sound notes as bell ringers practicing to take part in the Easter morning service at St. Andrew’s Church.

Kathryn Boughton

KENT—There will be a joyful noise in St. Andrew’s Church Easter morning when a set of handbells donated to the church some 40 years ago are used for the first time by a choir currently rehearsing with music director Susan Guse.

Guse said that the church got the valuable three-octave set when Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center closed in the late 1980s and the bells were donated to the church. “The center used the bells for music therapy for younger patients. Our priest then was chaplain there and when the center closed, he brought the bells here,” she explained.

Keep ReadingShow less
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Penguin Random House

‘Picasso’s War” by Foreign Affairs senior editor Hugh Eakin, who has written about the art world for publications like The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and The New York Times, is not about Pablo Picasso’s time in Nazi-occupied Paris and being harassed by the Gestapo, nor about his 1937 oil painting “Guernica,” in response to the aerial bombing of civilians in the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War.

Instead, the Penguin Random House book’s subtitle makes a clearer statement of intent: “How Modern Art Came To America.” This war was not between military forces but a cultural war combating America’s distaste for the emerging modernism that had flourished in Europe in the early decades of the 20th century.

Keep ReadingShow less