Just Too Much To Ask

Newtown’s finance officials have taken to calling this year’s budget season “The Perfect Storm,” which is how they see the ominous confluence of factors that threatens to swamp the electorate’s willingness to pay for an $80 million budget. The opening of a new school, the steady stream of new students taxing the resources of the old schools, the state’s running retreat from its financial commitments to towns and cities, and the final, groaning twist of the screw –– revaluation –– have come together at once to present the typical Newtown homeowner with the prospect of a tax increase of 15 to 20 percent or more. The annual budget referendum is April 22. Batten down the hatches.

Critics of this year’s budget say that it is just too much to ask people of modest means, many of them on fixed retirement incomes, to divert hundreds of dollars more from their already burdensome household, food, and medical expenses to a local government that seems oblivious to their plight. And they are right.

Proponents of the budget, mostly school advocates, say that it is just too much to ask to withdraw support from a school system that already spends less per pupil than 80 percent of the school districts in Connecticut, that has already wrung significant savings out of oil contracts, school supplies, and health insurance, and just built a state-of-the-art 5/6 school for $4.6 million less than original estimates. And they are right.

The proposed budget for 2003–2004 is not the problem. Passing it or rejecting it will not solve the problem. Packing 30 kids in every classroom and giving them each one sheet of paper for the year will not make Newtown’s tax burden less onerous in any meaningful way. Passing the budget intact still won’t get us out of the hole we are digging year by year by deferring routine maintenance and improvement projects in Newtown’s schools.

The budget is just a symptom of the problem that needs to be addressed soon: Newtown’s uncontrolled residential growth. We cannot impose on property owners unfair and arbitrary limits on what they can and cannot do with their land, and in today’s real estate market, the incentives are great to sell land for home construction. If we are to help ourselves as a community as we go about formulating budgets, running our schools, protecting the interests of all our citizens, especially those pressed to the brink of insolvency by their property tax bills, we must conceive and realize equally attractive incentives for land owners to leave Newtown a legacy of open space… breathing room, let’s call it. This will require more of our money for open space purchases, more of our creativity in coming up with land use alternatives and tax incentives aimed at preserving the quality of life in Newtown, and more of our patience and commitment as we dedicate ourselves to this long-term goal.

To expect a solution in the short term, either by voting this budget up or down, is just too much to ask.