Bedford Centrals budget growth will be difficult to harness given the salary increases the taxpayers are stuck with under the terms of the two-year extension signed quietly in the late evening of July 5, 1995. While most of us had the school year behind us, the teachers union out-maneuvered the board into accepting blindly outrageous increases.

Yesterday, the labor department announced that collective bargaining agreements settled nationwide during the fourth quarter of 1995 resulted in average wage increases of 1.8% for the first year and 2.3% annually over the life of the contrast. In stark contrast, the Bedford Teachers Association will be getting a 3.5% increase to its already automatic built-in escalations to the automatic 15-year step schedule. 

Without taking into account additional compensation for accumulating graduate school credits, the average year-to-year pay increases for 1996-97 will be 8% - five times the national average for collective bargaining agreements.

As an example, a teacher with a master's degree at step 5 making a salary of $46,612 will make $49,975 in 1996-97. This same teacher at step 14 being paid $68,054, will be paid $75,555 in 1996-97. With these unjustified salary increases, it becomes increasingly difficult for the board to deliver a budget proposal with a 2.5% increase over last year's spending.

Last year, at this time, I wrote to the board warning the contract extension reached in 1994 formally ratified in 1995 was going to cost the district taxpayer dearly through 1998 and beyond, Requests for budget Projections based on its labor agreements continue to fail On deaf cars Requests that it publicly develop spending priorities meet a similar fate.

Before this board of education requests another penny in the budget or in a bond issue, it owes tile taxpayer the truth about -where our spending and taxation is heading, over the next few years. Don't hold your breath though. Judging by their voting records, five board members seem more interested in the union's welfare than the. plight of the besieged taxpayers -- parents, homeowners and commercial property owners, alike.

How much longer will this board ask us to continually pay for what we cannot see?