Today, I received a comment on my blog post Democracy is Scary entitled, know the facts that I think deserves addressing in a full post.

The commentator asserts that I am not “accurately representing the facts”. The first assertion of the commenter is that “the taxpayers are not paying for the administrators representation”. This is based on an apparent misunderstanding concerning who is paying directly for the lead attorney. The lead attorney, Thomas Gerarde as well as Katherine Rule, both of Howd & Ludorf, are being paid by the insurance company, Massamont Insurance. This does not mean that the taxpayers are off the hook. My understanding is that there is a deductible and may be limits to the amounts that are covered as part of the insurance policy. In addition, there is no way of knowing if this case will cause in increase in the premiums in the coming years. On top of that attorney Christine Chinni is paid by the school board and not by the insurance company. She has been at the hearings everyday, as well as at the Board of Education meeting on Monday evening.

Beyond this, I do agree with the commenter that we need to know the facts. Andy Thibault has been doing yeoman’s work trying to help us get to the facts. You can read about his latest effort in Many Public Records Still Under Wraps Since Aug 1. Andy has been trying hard to get the facts, and the school administration has been less than forthcoming. I hope that the commenter contacts the school administration and the school board and encourages them to be more forthcoming about the facts.

The commenter also asserts that “nearly all Principals and Superintendents in the state earn the same salaries”. A brief check of the The Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents list of Connecticut Superintendent vacancies shows Canterbury is currently looking for a superintendent in the range of $108,000-$118,000. Region 16 is looking for a superintendent in the range of $130,000-$145,000. I’ve been told that Superintendent Scwartz is being paid considerably about the Region 16 range. However, I have yet been able to get details, and this is another area where Andy Thibault is trying to get information from the school administration.

I should also note that while I did live in Stamford (not Stanford, as the commenter suggests), I have moved to Woodbridge. Woodbridge is also a wealthy area that has spent a lot of money on renovations and on legal fees. My father-in-law, a retired U.S. Treasury Agent was part of a committee that investigated these costs. It is my belief, in line with the suggestion that we need to know the facts, that investigating construction costs and legal costs are an important part of the checks and balances that we need and that are too often lacking with regard to school boards.

I have no objection to the new auditorium. As I’ve spoken with taxpayers and voters in Region 10, they have all noted that the auditorium was needed. I am glad that it was built. I just hope to see that the costs are properly tracked and that it gets the sort of utilization that it deserves.