Norwich — Mayor Peter Nystrom is calling for a meeting of legislators and municipal leaders from throughout eastern Connecticut to discuss state mandates for education and special education costs that are driving up local budgets, causing deficits and higher property taxes.

Nystrom sent an invitation Wednesday night for an open meeting at 5:30 p.m. Monday, June 25, at Norwich City Hall, 100 Broadway, to legislators throughout the region. On Thursday, he said he invited representatives from other larger towns in the region and hopes officials from towns of all sizes attend the meeting to discuss presenting a “block of votes” by legislators in the region to force changes to underfunded special education costs and unfunded state mandates.

“I’m trying to get all these people in the room to realize as a block they have a lot of influence to change these issues,” said Nystrom, a former state representative. “... If you come together as a group like that, the numbers overwhelm all issues. If we all started standing together on issues, it should unite us now. My biggest hope is to get in a room and say, ‘Hey, you’ve got clout, use it.’”

Norwich this week concluded a contentious budget season, with the City Council adopting a final budget late Monday that officials expect will leave a big deficit in the education budget by next spring. The current city education budget faces an estimated $1.5 million deficit when the books close June 30. Education officials expect to present the City Council with the final deficit total when all bills are accounted for in August.

State Sen. Cathy Osten, D-Sprague, co-chairwoman of the legislature's Appropriations Committee, discussed the meeting with Nystrom and state Rep. Kevin Ryan, D-Montville, during a ribbon-cutting event Thursday morning in Norwich. Osten said she and Ryan have been meeting with Dolliver and Norwich school officials throughout the spring, including one meeting at the end of the legislative session.

Osten said she has been tracking education funding. She said the so-called holdbacks of education funding by the state to make up the state deficit hit eastern Connecticut towns harder than those in other parts of the state.

"I'm well aware of what's going on and have been meeting with people. I have had a strong conversation with the commissioner of education," she said.

But Osten said Norwich has been spared those cuts and any cuts in Education Cost Sharing grants, the main state education funding source, because the city school system is a state Alliance District. Osten also said the legislature increased the percentage of state funding in the special education formula.

"We're also balancing the budget without raising taxes," Osten said of the state budget.

The City Council on Monday approved a school budget with a 3 percent increase over this year’s budgeted $76.1 million total — not including the deficit — to a total of $78.46 million. The Board of Education had requested $83 million, a 9 percent, $6.8 million increase over this year’s total, saying that much was needed to keep current programs and staffing in the already crowded schools.

Special education tuition and transportation costs are driving much of this year’s deficit, school officials have said, including a drop of about $700,000 in state special education funding this year through the complex Special Education Excess Cost Sharing formula.

Through the formula, Norwich must pay the first $75,000-per-year cost for any special education student. The threshold is higher for Norwich than for many other towns in the region based on the formula. The state pays 73 percent of the cost in excess of $75,000.

But the $75,000 spent does not include the support services the Norwich school budget pays for individual Norwich special education students — such as for speech pathologists, other specialists and nursing support — at Norwich Free Academy. Those costs do not qualify for state reimbursement, Superintendent Abby Dolliver said at a recent school board meeting, explaining part of the deficit.

Dolliver said she hasn’t seen a proposed agenda for Nystrom’s meeting, so she couldn’t comment on specific goals.

“I hope it works,” Dolliver said. “It’s nice to bring people together looking for solutions.”

c.bessette@theday.com