Warren council president angry over school legislation

Rep. Joseph DePasquale believes Rep. Kenneth Marshall is “pandering” to his Bristol base

By Ted Hayes
Posted 2/28/18

Legislation that would define the Bristol Warren Regional School District as a “community” and not as two distinct towns joined together is going over like a lead balloon in Warren, where …

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Warren council president angry over school legislation

Rep. Joseph DePasquale believes Rep. Kenneth Marshall is “pandering” to his Bristol base

Posted

Legislation that would define the Bristol Warren Regional School District as a “community” and not as two distinct towns joined together is going over like a lead balloon in Warren, where the head of the town council sees it as an attempt to undermine recent court decisions that sided with Warren over the funding of education here.
Last week, Rep. Kenneth Marshall of Bristol introduced H-7545, a bill he said would recognize school districts as single “communities,” and not two separate towns joined in a single school district.
He said his goal for the legislation was to put a “place holder” on the books in case the two towns opt to create an independent taxing district to fund schools. The tax district idea has been talked about in recent months as a new way to pay for public education — by having property owners pay a tax bill to the town for their town services, and a separate bill to the school district for public education.
But as it stands now, Rep. Marshall said, the towns of Warren and Bristol “can’t be two entities operating as one taxing district.”
“They have to be one entity or community. I can understand the concern from Warren that they’re going to take a hit. But that’s not the intent, never was the intent and I would be out of my mind to put something in like that when I represent half of Warren and half of Bristol.”
Besides, he added, “The legislation won’t pass without resolutions from the two communities that they want it to pass.”

Warren responds
On Monday, Warren Town Council President Joseph DePasquale said he doesn’t buy the “place holder” argument and said he is “very disappointed” in the Bristol legislator.
He said the bill was a surprise, as he has never had conversations with Rep. Marshall about the issue, and never heard him speak about it publicly at recent Joint Finance Committee meetings. He said he is very wary of the legislator’s intent:
“If he wanted to do any place holding, he could have contacted me. This sounds like a legislative run around this court case. If he wants to have a place holder bill, I’ll gladly welcome that (but) I speak for myself and the entire town council that in no way do we see this as a cooperative effort. I think he’s playing political football and pandering to his Bristol constituents.”
Rep. Marshall represents 7,648 registered voters in Bristol and 3,147 in Warren.
Rep. Marshall said he has heard that Warren residents are upset with the legislation, and said he will modify the document’s language this week to make more it more clear that it would only apply if a taxing district is created.
Ironically, he said, he filed the legislation in hopes of “getting away from” the animosity over school funding that has plagued the two towns in recent years.
“I’ve been pretty public in regards to the need for the two towns to work together and develop some solutions to the animosity that continues to exist between the two towns,” he said.
“I am deeply concerned that if we as a whole don’t get an answer in solving this animosity and writing it into new legislation that both communities can agree on, we are going to constantly go down the road of looking for ways to either deregionalize or hurt the educational system.
But Mr. DePasquale said the legislative action was in no way a cooperative effort and doesn’t help relations between the two towns:
“I don’t remember being invited” to a discussion on the legislation, Mr. DePasquale said.
“We have not sent in a resolution in any way asking for a separate taxing district. I am asking him now to explain this to me in a way that I can understand.”

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