Schools

Ballard: 'I Am Tired of This Crap'

The East Penn Board of School Directors passed a $129.9 million zero-tax increase 2013-2014 school budget at Monday night's meeting, but that's only part of the story.

The East Penn Board of School Directors passed a $129.9 million, zero-tax increase final budget for the 2013-2014 school year at the board’s meeting Monday night.

But, knowing that fact is in many ways the same thing as flipping to the last page of a who-done-it novel. You may get to “hear” the detective reveal the murderer’s identity, but you surely will have missed out on quite a few twists and turns along the way.

And, the nearly four hours that led up to the final budget vote was certainly a bit windy, with, among other things, School Director Lynn Donches following the administration’s budget presentation, delivered by Superintendent of Schools Thomas L. Seidenberger, with a budget presentation of her own. In Donches’ 27-slide report, she proposed an additional $841,906 in budget cuts.

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Many of Donches’ proposed cost reductions came from comparing actual budget expenses for certain line items to the amount budgeted for 2013-2014. For those line items in which the budgeted amount was more that what was spent, she suggested rolling back the budgeted amount.

Seidenberger, who described himself a “hawk on money” earlier in the meeting, took offense to Donches’ proposed cuts.

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“That’s a very dangerous message you are sending to my staff,” Seidenberger said. “What are you telling them, that if we budget it and they don’t spend it, it should go away?”

School Board President Charles Ballard, too, voiced some his concerns about Donches’ presentation.

“I have been distressed, bothered and worried by what I see as some major propaganda techniques being used in this discussion,” Ballard said, describing Donches’ material as an “ambush” and calling it an attempt to make the administration “look foolish.”

“I am incensed that this type of thing is occurring,” Ballard said. “If the cause was so noble and just, you would not have to do this, springing surprises on the administration, at the last minute of the last hour of the last day of the budget cycle.

“If it looks like a snake, and it hisses like a snake then, as far as I am concerned it’s a snake in the grass. I am tired of this crap.

“This kind of stuff has got me angry and I have restrained myself for a large portion of the year, and I just can’t do it any more. You have not seen me in full-on debate mode and let me tell you, you don’t want to see me in full-on debate mode,” he said.

In the end, the administration’s budget passed 8-1, with Donches casting the lone opposing vote.


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