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Gilbert School — The Town's Albatross!
By Ray Pavlak, Winsted
The taxpayers of Winchester are being subjected to an additional financial demand by the agent of the fiscally strapped Gilbert trustees, the Gilbert school board. I wrote recently of the sad fact that the Town of Winchester is tied to the Gilbert School and Trust [The Gilbert School—A Very Expensive Relic, February 21]. Further, I wrote that this connection to a largely "broke" relic has made the town into a financial cow to be milked by the Gilbert Trust to maintain "its school" and its power and control—at an expensive cost to you and me, the town's taxpayers.
A recent article in the Republican-American [Gilbert School wants $175,000 cut of Anthem windfall, March 14] carries the news of another financial demand on the town by the Gilbert School Corporation: a ridiculous demand of $175,000 for what Gilbert calls its share of the $804,000 the Anthem Insurance Co. passed to the town when Anthem went public. The taxpayers of Winsted voted at the annual town meeting and referendum last year to use the Anthem stock sale money to reduce the annual budget and get some needed relief from the constantly upward spiral of costs for schooling and municipal government.
Simply put, Gilbert's school board or staff never paid any of the premiums for the Anthem insurance. Premiums were paid for by the town with taxpayers' money, not by Gilbert. This "demand" by Gilbert to be reimbursed for something they never paid for is ludicrous.
I wish the unwise decision of a "pro-Gilbert" majority (which was emotionally elected to the town's school board five years ago) to sign a ten-year contract with the private Gilbert School never happened, but it did. Even with the end of the contract five years from now, the town will still be in a bind because it allowed Gilbert to grab millions in state and local tax money to rebuild their "private" school. This means the town cannot get state aid to build its own high school for 25 more years. What an expensive mess!
Sadly, the town and its taxpayers are being held hostage to a group of private trustees who appoint the Gilbert school board, which calls the shots as to how much of and how the public's taxes will be spent at Gilbert School. The Gilbert trustees' and school board's appetite for money is insatiable and shameful.
Although the people of Winsted presently have no real control over the spending at Gilbert, they can stop this attempt of Gilbert to grab a share of the Anthem stock sale money, which they have no right to. As Mayor Forrest has said, "If they want to take this to court, let them."
I don't favor voucher use to avoid public schooling, but given this intolerable situation at Gilbert School, maybe it is time to follow Hartland's lead and make vouchers available to our high school students.
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