The Idiocracy Ledger

There are two ways to look at the spectacular collapse of the Sherman School and the resulting $50 million tax burden. The first is to assume the Lowe administration is simply oblivious—a group of well-meaning but fundamentally incompetent officials who were caught completely off-guard when the roof started leaking and the K-Wing began to rot.

The second, far more disturbing possibility, is that they knew exactly what they were doing.

In municipal governance, true intent is rarely found in press releases or hallway apologies. It is found in the ledger. When you hand the Town of Sherman’s operating budgets from 2013 to 2026 to a professional auditor, a chilling narrative emerges. The data reveals that the decay of the Sherman School was not an accident. It was the predictable, manufactured result of a highly specific fiscal strategy: Demolition by Neglect.

Here is what the math reveals about the intentional starving of Sherman’s most critical asset.

The Facilities Management Void

The most glaring anomaly in the town’s financial history is the complete elimination of the people responsible for keeping the buildings standing.

In the 2015/2016 budget, the town entirely defunded the $25,000 "Facilities Manager" line item. The position simply vanished. It did not reappear in any meaningful capacity until the 2021/2022 budget, and even then, it was tucked under the Emergency Services Facility (ESF) for a meager $5,228—explicitly not for general town or school maintenance. By the proposed 2025/2026 budget, this ESF management role is still only funded at $10,000.

For nearly ten years—the exact decade during which the school’s infrastructure actively decayed to the point of a $50 million crisis—the town budgeted essentially zero dollars for dedicated facility management leadership at the municipal level. It is no coincidence that the K-Wing was shuttered in 2015, the exact same year the Facilities Manager was defunded.

Idiocracy 2006 - 20th Century Fox

Sidebar: The Idiocracy Metaphor

When Mike Judge’s satirical film Idiocracy was released in 2006, it was a box office flop. Today, it is widely regarded by political scientists and cultural critics as a prophetic documentary. The film depicts a dystopian future where society is governed by an administration obsessed with image, optics, and performative bureaucracy, while entirely incapable of managing basic infrastructure.

In modern municipal governance, an "idiocracy" manifests when a town’s leadership becomes completely detached from second and third-order effects. It occurs when administrations prioritize highly visible, cosmetic projects—like freshly paved beach parking lots—over the invisible, foundational rot of a primary school roof. It is a system where "safety and security" are weaponized not to protect the public, but to shield the bureaucracy from having to produce its own ledgers.

When a government operates purely on perception rather than intention, the resulting financial collapse is never an accident. It is the mathematical certainty of an idiocracy.

The Starvation of the School

While the buildings were left unmanaged, the Board of Education was placed on a financial starvation diet.

During an inflationary decade where the costs of basic goods, services, and construction skyrocketed, the BOE budget was intentionally flatlined, and in some years, actively reduced:

It is mathematically impossible to maintain a large municipal building during an inflationary period with a shrinking budget. The administration was not simply "holding the line on taxes"; they were ensuring the school did not have the capital required to survive.

The Optics of Idiocracy: Paving Roads While the Roof Leaks

If the town was so broke that it had to cut facility managers and shrink the school budget, where was the money going?

The budgets reveal a strategy focused entirely on optics over infrastructure. While the school deteriorated, the administration consistently funded highly visible public works projects. Road maintenance was funded at consistently high levels, jumping from $295,596 in 2017 to a proposed $325,000 in 2025.

The budget rationales explicitly state that these funds were used to pave roads and beach parking lots. The administration made a calculated choice: they prioritized the smooth paving of the beach parking lot so residents wouldn't scuff their tires, while actively ignoring the catastrophic failure of the roof over the town's children. It is a prioritization strategy ripped straight from the script of Idiocracy.

The Executive Reward

Perhaps the most insulting revelation in the audit is how the chief executive was compensated while the town's infrastructure collapsed.

The Sherman Salary Surge: Executive Compensation vs. Standard Inflation

Don Lowe has recently claimed that his salary is "among the worst salaries of Town CEO's in the 169 Connecticut towns". But the ledger tells a very different story of aggressive, insulated growth.

From 2015 to the proposed 2026 rate, the First Selectman’s salary increased by roughly 78%. This staggering, unrelenting increase contrasts sharply with the town’s claimed inability to fund critical roof repairs or maintain the K-Wing. The executive was richly rewarded for presiding over the decay of the town.

The Hidden Ledger

We must recognize the devastating reality of this data. The town was not broke. The budgets confirm that from 2015 to 2025, the administration systematically moved half a million dollars annually out of the operating budget and hoarded it in a "Reserve for Capital Exp."

They had the liquidity to address the $9.7 million K-Wing repair plan identified in 2021. They had the money to fix the roof. Instead, they chose to hoard a $2.3 million surplus, let the building fail entirely, and then drop a massive, bonded $50 million megaproject squarely onto the backs of the taxpayers.

When you view the missing FOIA records and the weaponization of the state police through the lens of this financial audit, the administration's panic finally makes sense. They aren't just hiding the daily logs of a construction site. They are trying to hide a decade-long con.