Should the Waterford superintendent collect $360,000 a year?
For many people, the $220,000 a year Waterford had agreed to pay its schools superintendent, Jerome Belair, for the 2014-15 school year, seemed like a lot of money.
But a deal forged last fall between Belair and the Board of Education allowed him to also begin collecting $140,000 in pension benefits from the Connecticut Teachers Retirement Board.
The lucrative arrangement, which has allowed Belair to both retire and keep working, brushes up against a state law that prohibits full-scale double dipping in salary and teacher retirement pay.
But Belair and Waterford Board of Education members, backed by board lawyers, have crafted an arrangement they say makes the superintendent's supersized package of compensation legal.
Connecticut statute 10-183v specifically says someone receiving Connecticut teacher retirement benefits should be paid "no more than forty-five percent of the maximum salary level" in public money for an education job.
Indeed, Belair's new contract, ratified by the board in September, reduced his annual salary from $220,000 to $99,000, keeping it under the 45 percent limit required by law.
But the deal goes on to grant him the balance of the $220,000 by putting the money in separate retirement accounts in his name.
The new contract, which runs until the end of June, was signed Sept. 30 by Belair and Kathleen McCarty, then chairperson of the board and now a state representative.
In a special meeting Feb. 11, the board agreed to a one-year extension of the contract, until the end of June 2016, with the same terms. The final version of the latest contract will still have to be ratified.
The vote for negotiating the terms of another year was 7-2, with the new board chairwoman, Jody Nazarchyk, and member David Campo voting against.
The arrangement to allow Belair to both retire and keep working has angered some people in town, including some teachers who blame Belair, a Groton Long Point resident who started as Waterford superintendent in 2011, for low staff morale in the school system.
Many critics of the deal say it seems to circumvent the law limiting public education salary for teacher retirees. They say the arrangement with Belair may be legal but is unseemly or even unethical, a cynical example for people running a school system to set.
The teachers' union has also been complaining that the school board should have begun a search for a new superintendent last year, when they learned Belair was planning to retire, and looked for someone with a long-term commitment to the school system.
The board did vote to begin a search at its Feb. 11 special meeting, when it agreed to give Belair another year with pay split between salary and retirement funds.
Belair told me last week that others in the state have done it. He also noted that he is receiving a pension he has contributed to through many years of service.
He began collecting the pension, he said, because he had reached 37.5 years of service. His benefits had hit a maximum ceiling and would not have increased if he kept working and retired later.
"I am 62, and I wanted to keep working. I have a lot of energy," he said.
Belair told me he will retire for good in 2016.
Thinking of the more than $700,000 he is likely to accumulate in salary, pension and retirement fund contributions by then, I couldn't help but think of some of the characters in Eugene O'Neill's booze-sopped play "The Iceman Cometh," when they promise just one more drink.
In the end, the law is meant to protect the Connecticut Teachers' Retirement Board and the pension fund to which so many state teachers contribute.
Darlene Perez, director of the board, did not return multiple phone messages last week.
Former board Chairwoman McCarty, when I tracked her down during a busy week in her new role as a state legislator, had some good reasons why the board agreed to the unusual terms of Belair's contract.
For one, she said, board members relied on the advice of attorneys who assured them it was legal.
The board has been very pleased with Belair, she said, and gives him high marks for careful fiscal stewardship of the district, cutting costs while preserving programs. Test scores are up, she noted.
"If you had to survey the town, 90 percent of the people would be very pleased," she said. "The board did not want to be rushed (choosing a new superintendent). We thought we were doing what was in the best interests of our children, the students."
Indeed, the sharp differences of opinion in town on the topic of the superintendent's quasi-retirement might make for interesting classroom discussion, a learning experience.
This is the opinion of David Collins
d.collins@theday.com
Twitter: @DavidCollinsct
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