Said Manchester School Board member Kathy Staub after the aldermen passed Alderman Joyce Craig's budget, which gave an additional $2 million to city schools, “I was delighted that Joyce Craig found a way to get the school district what they asked for but lower everyone's taxes. She's a genius.”

Be thankful, parents, that neither Staub nor Craig teaches personal finance in the city school system.

Craig's “genius” was to spend one-time money, much of it available because of unanticipated budget savings, and give it to the school system to be spent on teachers. It was hardly an innovation. The city has repeatedly used one-time money to pay operating expenses.

In 2003, aldermen passed a budget that, like Craig's, came with a lower tax rate than the mayor's proposal, but only because it included $1.6 million in non-recurring funds, including $650,000 from land sales that were not identified — the aldermen simply assumed they could sell that much city property.

In 2007, aldermen passed a budget that delivered a bigger tax cut than the mayor had proposed, but they reached that number by draining $3.5 million from the city's $5.3 million economic development reserve fund and spending it on operating expenses.

For years, city school budgets have been inflated by one-time revenues, often from the school district's expendable trusts. Those special accounts were drained of millions of dollars to pay for operating expenses in 2009 and 2011. In 2010, federal stimulus money was used.

Earlier this year, a city teacher complained of the “crazy” way the city handles its school budget. Year after year teachers get pink slips in the spring and then have to wait until July to see if their positions are actually cut. Why does this happen? Because the aldermen and school board create budget holes by approving spending the city cannot afford. They issue pink slips just in case they cannot find enough money by the end of the year to cover all the spending they've approved. At the last minute, they fill some of the budget holes with whatever one-time money they can find, and they fire enough teachers to fill the rest. The whole process starts again the following year.

That's not genius. That's crazy. And aldermen just kept the process going for another year.