Eastbayri.com

The Warren Town Council has thrown its support behind the Joint Finance Committee’s lawsuit against the Bristol Warren Regional School Committee.

The council unanimously agreed to support the suit last Tuesday evening, following the same track the Bristol Town Council took a week earlier. Said council president David Frerichs, “I just don’t understand why it had to come to this. The school committee’s not making sense here.”

Made up of six Bristol officials and three from Warren, the JFC is charged with setting the regional school budget every year. Members decided to file suit earlier this year after the school committee unanimously refused to include the JFC on its liability insurance policy, though there would have been no additional cost to do so.

At a recent school committee meeting, an attorney for Interlocal Trust, the town’s insurance carrier, explained the benefits of including the JFC on the policy, and Bristol’s town solicitor, Michael Ursillo , called it a “no brainer.” However, the school committee and its attorney viewed it differently. The school committee’s attorney recommended not to include the JFC in its policy.

“We have no control over that subcommittee, (the JFC),” John Bento, school committee chairman, said in an interview. “We don’t want to be liable for them.”

Following Warren’s vote, Mr. Frerichs said he’s surprised, to say the least, that the school committee won’t bring the JFC under its umbrella. The decision will ultimately cost the district thousands in legal fees and other costs, he said, and for what?

“It doesn’t make any sense. In every other district, the joint finance is under the umbrella of that district’s school committee. It doesn’t cost them a penny, and it’s standard operating procedure.”

“Now they’re going to have to spend their money to pay their lawyer to defend a suit (and are going to be) soundly defeated in court.”

Mr. Frerichs said the committee’s decision is particularly hard to swallow this year, as the schools presented a budget that ultimately cost the town 66 cents in tax rate increases, while municipal services went up a fraction of that amount.

“The reality is the town gave everything it could possibly give,” he said. “We cut the town down to nothing and then to see this happen?”

“I thought we had a very good working relationship with the school committee before all this,” he said. “I thought we were working together as a team.”