The Measure Of Our Wealth

They say the real measure of your wealth is how much you would be worth if you lost all your money. This year, Newtown’s budgetmakers have been forced by a sour economy and political prudence to apply such a measure to the town’s finances. This week they began a process of budget review and deliberation that seeks to engage the public in assessing where Newtown’s riches lie — not in terms of dollars and cents, but in the purer coin of shared community values. The accuracy of that assay depends completely upon an informed community that understands the fiscal challenges of 2009-2010 and cares enough to help distinguish between the essential and the dispensable.

To that end, two public hearings bracket the five public budget review sessions by the Board of Finance. The first hearing was Wednesday this week, hosted by the finance board, and the second will be conducted by the Legislative Council on March 18 before it puts its budget recommendations to a town referendum. The intervening budget discussions will focus on the $38 million town budget on March 2 and 9, on the $67.2 million school budget on March 5 and 11, and both the town and school budgets on March 12.

For those with the civic grit to enter the labyrinth of line items right along with the finance board, the meetings are, as always, open to the public. They all start at 7 pm in the Lecture Hall of Newtown High School, 12 Berkshire Road, Sandy Hook. Both proposed town and school budgets are available online, respectively, at www.newtown-ct.gov and www.newtown.k12.ct.us and will be linked to The Bee’s online coverage of the budget sessions. Additionally, with the help of videographers from the Newtown High School Tech Club, the proceedings will be recorded and broadcast on local public access cable Channel 17. (The Bee plans to distill some highlights from those broadcasts and make them available at newtownbee.com.)

All the information in the world, whether it is presented in print, online, on air, or in person, will not do the community a bit of good unless it is received and assimilated by an interested electorate motivated enough to stand up and respond, “Spend our taxes here and not there.” At a time when all the world seems to be chasing fugitive money the way a dog might chase its tail, the measure of true wealth takes on extra importance. And in Newtown that wealth is measured by the community’s capacity to care and to act.