To the Editor:

Aesop’s Fables warned us “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.” Here in Newtown, there’s been some risky counting of unhatched chickens.

At their meeting on March 6, the Board of Finance noted that the First Selectman’s budget included revenue of over $1 million for the sale of the old police station. That building is for sale, but there’s no guarantee that a sale will be completed before the end of this fiscal year, and the revenue from the sale is likely to be significantly less than $1 million. That’s a good example of what Aesop warned us against.

Even with the possible revenue from the possible sale, this budget is really challenging. The Board of Finance made difficult decisions to cut from other budget lines to make up for removing this money from the revenue side of the budget. Our town government needs to be realistic about our budget; we can’t count on money we may not get to give the appearance of balancing the budget. That would risk leaving us with a huge deficit.

We need to be sure that our town’s proposed budget isn’t deceptive and is based only in reality, so that we can make the hard decisions that may be necessary. If, like me, you don’t understand the whole budget, be grateful to the Board of Finance for making sure we weren’t counting our chickens before they hatched.

Betsy Litt

Newtown