Mayor Segarra has released his recommended budget, saying “this  Budget  is  fiscally  prudent and  accountable  to  all  municipal  stakeholders,” but there have been some questions as to how accountability is being defined.

Richard Wareing, Hartford Board of Education Chair, let known his displeasure with what he says are now confirmed rumors about Segarra’s “intent to use over $12m of the Board’s money to balance the City’s budget for FY 2015-16” and an “approximately $3.5m in Board money to balance the FY 2014-15 budget.”

On this matter, Wareing says he was left in the dark, learning only through “informal sources within City Hall” that OPEB would be poached.

Wareing, in an email to Mayor Segarra, wrote: “I should have the courtesy of a call from you.  If you have time for cocktails with Brad Davis and well-heeled contributors, you have time to call me to discuss matters which significantly impact the education of our children.”

It seems that Superintendent Schiavino-Narvaez was also given no notice from Mayor Segarra. With no communication on this matter, Wareing said, “she intended to use some of the surplus reserve to balance the FY 2015-16 budget without layoffs and position eliminations beyond those already announced.  Instead, you let her present a budget to the Board and the community based on assumptions which you knew at the time were inconsistent with your own budget plans, yet you remained silent.”

What this may mean is that the school board will have to reconfigure its budget to cut $7M in spending, which would translate to layoffs and position eliminations. “Such additional cuts at the Board may allow you to balance your municipal election year budget without a tax increase or layoffs at City Hall,” Wareing wrote, “but they will hurt kids, especially those most in need.”

Some of the funding for OPEB comes from “special funds,” which Wareing says the “City never had, does not have, and never can have, a claim. Any appropriation by the City of the Board’s OPEB reserve will thus necessarily involve its appropriation of State and Federal grant monies to which it has absolutely no legal claim.”

“Our vision for our City and its future is already in sight,” wrote Segarra in his Transmittal Letter.

Segarra’s Recommended Budget for Fiscal Year 2016 is posted on the City of Hartford website.

The Hartford Board of Education meets tonight, 5 p.m., at M. D. Fox Elementary School, 470 Maple Avenue.