Woonsocket

Last night, despite what appeared to be considerable grounds to do so, the Woonsocket School Committee voted three to two against bringing in the State Police to investigate such matters as apparently falsified school budget surpluses and a vanishing termination clause. Under my post reporting this irresponsible development, City Council President John Ward this morning…

So here’s where we stood as tonight’s School Committee meeting was gaveled to order. A $69,000 surplus in the school budget had suddenly turned into a $2.7 million deficit (and a $10 million deficit for two years), in part, due to cuts in state aid and in part due to off-the-book hires by the prior…

[The post below has been revised with the addition of the link to the article, quoted extensively in the post, by the Valley Breeze’s Sandy Phaneuf, who appears to have broke the story about the Woonsocket School Comm contemplating the closure of schools two plus months early. I had omitted the link when the post…

With the recently exposed multi-year, multi-million dollar deficit in Woonsocket’s school budget and the subsequent downgrade of the city’s bonds, Woonsocket now qualifies for receivership, a.k.a., municipal bankruptcy, under Rhode Island’s new, albeit overarching, law. The big question now is whether the state will step in and start that process. Though terse, we get a…

So Monday night, with the Governor in attendance, Mayor Fontaine broke the disastrous findings of the audit of the school department’s budget. Thanks, in large part, to $4 million in overspending on salaries, the Woonsocket Education Department is projected to exceed their 2012 budget by more than $7.3 million. A budgetary recap is in order…

So last week, we learned that a seven figure deficit had surprisingly and unpleasantly materialized in the school budget in place of the small surplus that had been reported for months. We’re now waiting for the auditor’s report, expected very shortly, to hear the final amount of that deficit. But Woonsocket Finance Manager, Tom Bruce,…

The Woonsocket Patch reports. After months of reporting a small surplus, the Woonsocket Education Department ended the 2010-2011 year with a $2.7 million deficit, according to the draft operating results sent to Finance Director Thomas Bruce on Monday by auditors from Braver PC. … “As recent[ly] as a meeting with the superintendent of schools and…

On the last day to do so, Former Mayor Susan Menard has filed declaration papers for the office of mayor. (Woonsocket has off year elections.) It should be noted that pulling papers is only a first step to running for office. The Valley Breeze correctly points out that Critics of Menard may wonder, however, if…

Valley Breeze publisher Tom Ward has written an apology for a previous column where he described changes in the Woonsocket Fire department platoon structure and scheduling as being correctives to “overtime abuse”…My column this week went over the line in its tone, and for that I apologize to our readers, especially the firefighters of Woonsocket…