IPN Recommends Budget Approval

To the Editor:

The Independent Party of Newtown (IPN) encourages voters to support the proposed budget at the April 22 referendum. We believe strongly that this is the best budget that the current system will produce for the coming fiscal year. Failure to approve it will lead to a series of arbitrary cuts that will almost certainly reduce highly desired services. And while the budget increase is more than we had hoped would be asked of taxpayers, it essentially maintains the current level of services and taxation, adjusted for inflation and assuming there has been some modest growth in the tax base.

IPN recently called for the Legislative Council to examine specific line items for possible reduction. In this regard, the minor subcommittee meetings held for the first time in five years were a step in the right direction. However, the council was handicapped by a lack of thorough documentation supporting a number of budget requests, particularly on the town side. It is our hope that the council will undertake a review that will lead it to a stronger budget process, providing our public officials with tools to better ferret out waste and prioritize requests for spending increases in a systematic and rational way.

 Coming into office last December as a minority party, IPN was not able to achieve such reforms on its own; our efforts to address the budget served mainly to highlight the ways in which the process needs improvement. We will continue to push hard for changes, such as the requirement that all departments break down their requests to distinguish required spending from that which is optional, with documented justifications for discretionary programs and services. In addition, we will encourage all public agencies to conduct more in-depth reviews of the budget so that they, and the taxpayers, will have a chance to have all their questions answered on any and all line items that are proposed.

IPN also plans to aggressively pursue new tax reform strategies that can offer meaningful relief for seniors and lower-income residents, and to explore the possibility of finding alternative revenue sources that might reduce the tax burden on all households.

We ask the citizens of Newtown to support the current proposal with the understanding that, while it is by no means perfect, it is the best we can expect for this fiscal year. On the whole, it represents vital spending on essential or highly desired services for our community, with sacrifices having already been made on both the town and education sides. IPN stands committed to improving the budget process as we move forward, but a protest vote at this time would only serve to weaken us as a town and would make further demands of a system that is currently ill-equipped to handle them. Please vote Yes for the budget on April 22.

Ben Roberts

(On behalf of the IPN Budget Committee)

19 Farrell Road, Newtown                                                April 9, 2008