At separate meetings tonight, the Finance Subcommittee of the Portsmouth School Committee met to hear PHS Principal Bob Littlefield's budget request, and the Town Council, with State Senator Charles Levesque and Reps. Amaral and Loughlin attending, discussed a range of issues from cap relief for the reval to police overtime to arsenic levels.

At the Finance Committee, Principal Littlefield discussed the increasing challenges of meeting NEASC accreditation and state mandates for 4-year math and graduation by proficiency, given a tighter than ever budget regime. "We're constantly asked to do more, and we're trying to respond with resources remaining the same," said Littlefield. "My staff has responded by working that much harder."

But existing resources, he pointed out, can only go so far; his submitted budget had about a 5% increase. An additional position is needed to meet the new math requirement, and he urged the School Committee to fund new social studies texts. "For 9th grade geography, it would be nice to have books that have Russia instead of the Soviet Union."

Indeed. Given the stinginess of some opponents of school funding, it's surprising the textbooks have the results of the Siege of Vicksburg. BTW — The PCC had one of their folks taking notes at the meeting. Are they going to try to outblog me? Hey, Loudy: Bring it. Let's see some of Tailgunner Gleason's vaunted technical expertise.

At the Town Council, about 40 citizens were on hand for a sometimes heated discussion of Sen. Levesque's bill to exempt the cost of Portsmouth's state-mandated property revaluation from the Paiva Weed tax cap. At a cost of $320K, that line item alone could have made it difficult for the town to meet the cap numbers next year, and Sen. Levesque had introduced a bill to help. And, okay, the legislation, as drafted, had the appearance of removing the tax cap for Portsmouth entirely for next year, so it had to be corrected. Levesque told the council that the bill had been withdrawn and redrafted, but that didn't satisfy some on the council.

"I have a question," said Pete McIntyre. Levesque replied, "I knew you would draw this out, Peter." Since Levesque's bill was "identical" to one introduced by Amy Rice, he urged the council not to accept it.

Tailgunner Gleason, in typical fashion, said, "Didn't I request that we put in the amount? I don't understand why $448K was in there." Levesque replied that at the time the bill was presented, the council had not yet let the contract for the reval. "The request was to bring it to the council. It's before you right now." Then Gleason asked about another paragraph discussing how the Town Council must act to override a tax cap. After having to explain to Tailgunner how to read legislation, "Underlined is new, strikethrough is what's being taken out," it seemed her questions were answered. "You thought you had me for a second," he chuckled.

Then Loudy asked why the Council hadn't requested legislation to delay the revaluation. (Hey, there's an idea. Why not have a "Don't ask; Don't tell" policy for the tax assessor. We'll all agree that our houses are worth, say, $12K, and happily pay tax on that.) Town Admin Bob Driscoll replied that there were competing bills in the lege that would extend the period to 4 or 5 years, and there was a good likelihood one would pass.

Moving on. Huck (He's ALIVE! They FOUND HIM! He was rescued by a Japanese freighter, but sadly, Wilson was lost.) Little voiced dissatisfaction with current approach for hiring Portsmouth employees. "I have a hard time with voting for those being recommended without being there." The new policy, put in place in early 2005, created a recommending panel of town administration and two council members. ("Where the") Huck wanted to sit in. This prompted Tailgunner Gleason to demand that she participate too. "It's my responsibility as a Council member," she averred. If I don't, she argued, "It's a liability risk for me."

Dennis Canario had heard enough. "It's not a liability risk," he said. "We put our faith in our department heads." "I understand what you're saying..." Gleason began. "I don't think you do," Canario said.

In the end, they voted to waste more of the Council's time by allowing them to participate in all the interviews. Since they're held during working hours, of course, only those who are not otherwise employed will be able to attend...

For the rest of the meeting, the council picked at Chief Hebert's overtime numbers, approved three RFPs related to preliminary work on the Town Center, and supported a bill by John Laughlin asking for the state to fairly fund group home placements in town.

Rep Joe Amaral (Tiverton/Portsmouth) was on hand for discussion on a request from Middletown for support in raising the acceptable level of arsenic in the soil. While the council was not inclined to act without hard data, they heard from Amaral that the current RI level of 7ppm (estimated to cause cancer in 1 in 50K) is considerably larger than the Federal level of .4ppm (1 cancer per 1M pop). That's not a typo. Point four as opposed to seven. He promised to send the Council reference material.

Knowing what they are going through in Tiverton, I cannot imagine that our Council would go out of their way support something at such variance with the requirements of those notorious treehugging moonbats at the EPA. However, a cursory examination of the EPA site indicates that they consider a range of up to 39 ppm to be without significant risk, and the minutes of the RIDEM meeting that adopted the standard don't seem to have a lot in the way of scientific backup. But stay tuned.