Jeff is MisLEADING Us

The math doesn't add up¶

The mailer's headline figure isn't per-student cost. It's a number designed to sound alarming.

Mr. Maguire arrives at the $81,833 figure by dividing the three-year AES budget increase ($1,224,499) by the three-year change in K-6 enrollment (15 students). That's not how per-student cost works.

Per-student cost is the budget divided by the number of students. Not the change in budget divided by the change in students. By the same arithmetic, a household that got a $30,000 raise over three years and had a new baby would conclude the baby costs $30,000 a year.

Andover's actual per-student spending under the proposed budget is approximately $26,500, in line with Connecticut elementary norms.

What the data actually shows¶

Connecticut's own data tells the opposite of Mr. Maguire's story. Three independent measures, all pointing the same way.

The "unsustainable" framing has it backwards¶

The mailer calls Andover's budget growth "unreasonable and unsustainable." The opposite is closer to true.

A town whose total budget rose 2.9% over five years while inflation rose 23.1% has been the one absorbing the squeeze, not the one driving it. Andover's per-pupil spending grew at roughly half the peer-group rate. The town has been running unusually lean by every measure available.

The proposed FY 2026-27 AES budget does represent a meaningful single-year jump, about 9.8% over FY 2025-26. That's the same 9.8% figure that appeared above in a different context (Andover's per-pupil growth over the previous five years). Both numbers are real, and the coincidence is just that. The point: even with this single-year jump on top of the five-year per-pupil trend, the cumulative picture is still well below inflation, which rose 23.1% over those same five years. That's a conversation worth having on its merits. The Board of Finance has held public meetings on exactly that topic. Mr. Maguire was at those meetings.

A NO vote doesn't re-open that conversation. It produces another vote, a few weeks later, on essentially the same budget.

One more thing about the budget itself¶

Andover's two ballot questions show what we spend, but not where the revenue comes from. That changes how the numbers read.

When you vote Tuesday, you'll see three separate budget categories. A town budget of $4.36 million covers General Government plus the Capital budget. The Board of Education budget is $5.01 million for Andover Elementary School. RHAM appears as a $4.15 million levy on the town side. Each looks like a stand-alone bill.

But Andover, like every Connecticut town with public schools, receives an Education Cost Sharing (ECS) grant from the state, $2.08 million this year. The grant is calculated using student counts, district enrollment, and local property wealth. It exists because Andover has schools.

ECS is legally unrestricted: the state pays it to the town, and the town decides how to account for it. There's no state law requiring towns to credit ECS to one budget side or the other. Different towns make different choices. Monroe treats ECS as town-side revenue. Manchester pulls it explicitly out of the town side to offset the school appropriation. The choice is local, and Andover's was made when the budget was bifurcated by charter amendment in November 2022.

Andover currently records ECS as general town revenue, reducing the town-side tax requirement. The schools that generated the revenue see none of it on the ballot.

The same $11.45 million in local funding, split two ways:

The total tax bill is identical either way. The mill rate doesn't change. This isn't about whether the town spends too much or too little on schools. It's about how the spending is presented in two separate ballot questions, and how that presentation shapes what voters think they're voting on.

A nearly identical question was contested in East Hampton in 2018, when most of a $700,000 ECS grant was allocated to reduce a general tax increase rather than to the schools. Education advocates argued the money belonged with the schools. The finance director's defense, that ECS reduced what the schools needed from taxes, was technically accurate, and both descriptions were true at the same time. The labeling choice mattered politically because each side gets voted on separately.

State law allows towns to make this allocation either way. It's worth a conversation with the Board of Finance.

Note: the 50/50 split between AES and RHAM in the comparison above is an approximation. Student counts and per-pupil costs differ between the two, so a more precise allocation would shift the numbers somewhat. But the broader point, that about $2 million in school-driven state revenue is currently invisible on the school side of the ballot, holds.

Who is making this case¶

The mailer doesn't say so, but Jeff Maguire is Andover's First Selectman. He participated in the budget process he's now asking voters to reject.

Under the town charter, the First Selectman is an ex officio member of every board, including Finance and Education. The provision had been mostly dormant for years. Mr. Maguire began exercising it this year, attending many BOF and BOE meetings and pressing hard on financial discussions.

He was in the room as this budget was built. He had standing to ask questions, request data, and weigh in at every stage. He did all of those things. The boards heard him out and produced this budget anyway.

The mailer is addressed to "Andover Taxpayers." It is not from one. The disclosure at the bottom identifies Mr. Maguire personally, with no mention that he is the town's First Selectman.

After the mailer drew an ethics complaint¶

An ethics complaint was filed with the State Board of Ethics regarding the mailer. The complaint was dismissed, which is what happens routinely when alleged conduct doesn't fall under state ethics jurisdiction. It tells us nothing about whether the mailer was a good-faith effort.

At the Board of Education meeting on May 13, 2026, Mr. Maguire spoke during public comment about the complaint. His own words, from the meeting recording:

I look at this as targeting and, you know, you're attempting to squash total dissent. And it's not going to work on me.

— Jeff Maguire, BOE meeting, May 13, 2026

Then, in the same address:

I told you, Caitlin, that I didn't want to file any Freedom of Information requests, but I've decided to reverse that course. So I'm going to give you three requests for information directly to you as the Chairperson…

— Jeff Maguire, BOE meeting, May 13, 2026

Read those two passages back to back. Mr. Maguire had previously told the Chair he wouldn't file FOIA requests. After the ethics complaint, he changed his mind and served three requests on her personally, explicitly framing them as a response.

FOIA is a legitimate tool. Filing FOIAs as announced retaliation against a board chair, in public comment, in front of the body she chairs, is a different thing. The First Selectman is telling Andover, on the record, that pushback against his actions will result in escalation.

What a NO vote actually does¶

A NO vote doesn't produce the scrutiny the mailer says we need. The scrutiny already happened.

The Board of Finance held public meetings on the budget. The Board of Education published monthly packets. The audited financial statements are public. Mr. Maguire, as ex officio member of both boards, was in those rooms raising concerns directly with the people doing the work.

The BOF and BOE listened, considered, and produced this budget. A NO vote doesn't reopen that process. It produces another vote, weeks later, on essentially the same budget, and asks the rest of us to pay for the second referendum.

Last year's first referendum failed. The BOE came back with a budget $163,694 lower, about 1.2% of the total. That's the realistic shape of a re-vote.

If you want real scrutiny, the next BOF meeting is public.