City to sue BOE over ‘deficit spending’

SHELTON — It’s the city vs. the Board of Education, round 2.

After more than an hour of executive session Thursday, the Board of Aldermen voted 5-4 to file legal action against Superintendent of Schools Chris Clouet and the Board of Education in response to a recently released audit report that said the school board overspent its budget allotment by some $3.1 million over a two-year period.

The motion stated that the “City of Shelton take appropriate legal action against the Shelton superintendent of schools and those responsible on the Board of Education and/or within the Shelton school district for deficit spending by the Shelton school district in violation of city charter as noted by the city of Shelton auditor for the fiscal years 20162017 and 2017-18.”

In a roll call vote, aldermen deadlocked at 4-4, with Mayor Mark Lauretti breaking the tie with a vote in favor of the legal action. David Gidwani, Jim Capra, Noreen McGorty and Cris Balamaci voted against the suit.

Town Attorney Fran Teodosio told Hearst Connecticut Media after the vote that the legal action will be formally filed with the court within a week. This is the second suit the city has filed against the Board of Education in the past year, a previous one being over the school bus transportation.

“This is the only option available to us,” Lauretti said after the meeting, “and we’ll have an independent party make a decision. As I have said before, this type of situation has never happened here before, and I think people must be held accountable.”

“Is this leadership by lawsuit?” asked Clouet after learning about the aldermen’s vote.

“This is going to be a huge waste of taxpayer dollars,” added Board of Education Chairman Mark Holden after learning of the decision.

Board of Education member and Shelton Democratic Town Committee Chairman Dave Gioiello, in a post on the Shelton DTC Facebook page, stated “Despite a highly disputable city audit, the mayor and four Republican aldermen have voted to initiate legal action against the Board of Education (BOE) and the superintendent of schools, over the excess cost grant money provided to the schools for special education for the last two years.”

Gioiello said there is a letter from the state Board of Education confirming that the Board of Education acted properly, but the city still is going ahead with a

lawsuit. When asked how the Board of Education would be called upon to reimburse the city, Lauretti said he was not sure, “but everything is on the table.

The suit stems from the report filed by CPA David Cappilletti of Clermont and Associates LLP, the city’s independent auditor. The audit uncovered a $3,170,300 accumulated loss in five special-revenue accounts maintained by the Board of Education and school district.

The biggest shortfall was $2,776,708 in the state excess cost-grant program, a fund used primarily to subsidize high-cost special education programs. Much of its revenue gets reimbursed by the state, hence the name of the fund.

“All of a sudden a fund is down $2.7 million?” asked Lauretti the night the audit report was discussed with the Aldermen in February. “That’s concerning to me. I don’t recall this ever happening in my many years as mayor.”

Cappilletti did not suggest there was any wrongdoing on the part of the Board of Education or school district staff. Instead, the problem came about because of misunderstandings of the budgeting requirements, he said, and a lack of communication between the school district and City Hall.

For his part, Clouet has stated that the school district sends a detailed letter to City Hall each year outlining any excess expenses.

“Neither the city nor its auditor — the same auditing firm that reviewed the Board of Education’s compliance with state of Connecticut excess-cost grant procedures in prior fiscal years, ever contested this process,” said Clouet in a prepared statement, “or the district’s legal right to the excess-cost funds.”

Clouet also said there are “serious errors” in the audit report.

He said the error stems from how the district uses and accounts for stateissued excess-cost funds that help school districts deal with unanticipated special ed costs. Such students, he said, typically “need complex services offered in out-of-district settings.”

After several unsuccessful attempts to get the auditor to alter his findings, the Board of Education filed an ethics complaint against David Cappilletti and Clermont and Associates LLC, with the state Board of Accountancy. No ruling has been made on that complaint as of yet.