Deciding How Much We Can Afford         

To the Editor:

It is clear to anyone who has read the front page of The Bee over the past few weeks that the town is approaching a defining moment. There is no way around the fact that in order to come close to meeting the town’s needs and maintaining a viable school system, the Legislative Council will have to approve a budget that will increase property taxes by an amount greater than the one mill increase they have held us to in the past few years. The town’s elected officials are now wrestling with the question of what the town needs and what the town can afford. As council member Melissa Pilchard told a Bee reporter in a February 18 article, “No matter how much you love your children, there’s a limit to what you can afford.”

What can we afford? This is a question the whole town must answer, not just the Legislative Council. In Mrs Pilchard’s comments and in some remarks by one or two other members of the Council, I can hear a concern that parental love threatens to unbalance the town’s budget.  It’s not just parental love that’s a factor here. There’s also civic pride. I think enough of the people of this town to believe that, whether or not they currently have children in the schools, they are willing to pay what is necessary to make sure that the teachers’ health plan is sufficiently funded, that we will not continue to lose some of our best teachers to other better-paying districts, and that class size will not exceed district guidelines. It isn’t just parents who are proud of the reputation of Newtown’s schools. Our highly-regarded school system is a source of town pride as important as our Main Street, our public library, our impressive civic and cultural organizations, and our unusually literate town newspaper. All of these things taken together create a shared ideal of Newtown as a town with a mind, a spirit, and an unusually strong sense of self-respect. This is what makes people proud to be from Newtown, not the fact that, regardless of the town’s needs, property taxes have been held to a one mill increase for three years running.

Sure it’s nice to have a few extra bucks, but not when taxes have been kept so low that we can’t meet our needs. As a community, we want some things that cost money. It costs money to preserve our scenic beauty and our quiet residential character, by keeping strict limits on revenue-generating industry and commerce. It costs money to have a school system that everyone in town can be proud of. If, as a town with a higher than average income, we were not willing to pay for the things we want, what would that say about us? Can we afford to become a town that stops caring about these things, simply in order to keep our taxes as low as they can possibly be kept? If we ever did stop caring about the town’s character and schools, would we be able to afford the decline in our property values?

Members of the Legislative Council who are been skeptical of the Board of Education’s budget increase have used Richard Nixon’s polarizing concept of a “silent majority” to refer to those Newtowners who would resist an increase of more than a mill. When this “silent majority” is invoked, it is normally represented as consisting of people on fixed, limited incomes who would be driven out of Newtown by their property tax bills. Perhaps the town should investigate the possibility of tax abatements for older residents with small incomes and high property tax bills. It would be better to grant such abatements than to restrict the entire town because of the unusual tax situation of what cannot be a very large portion of the population. Surely the great majority of those who can afford to buy property in Newtown can afford to pay the relatively moderate taxes on their property. They would probably have to pay more if they chose to live in other comparable places. If there is a “silent majority” against a necessary tax increase, it is more likely that it consists of people who, like all of us, would just as soon not have to pay any more money in taxes than they have to. While this group has certainly been “silent” so far, I think that there is a real question as to whether or not it is a “majority.” Until we know that it is a majority, and not a projection of those who think that the one mill a year limit is something sacred, I don’t think we should assume that it is a majority. In a democracy, there are ways of finding out what the majority believes.

I recognize and respect the fact that the Legislative Council feels itself to be in a no-win situation. There is a way out of this, however. Let the voters decide directly whether or not we can afford to fund the Board of Education’s budget request. Perhaps the majority will decide that the town can’t afford a first-rate school system. My guess is that, in Newtown, the majority will decide that it can’t afford not to.

Dana Brand

32 Hi Barlow Road, Newtown                                      February 29, 2000