Other People’s Money

To the Editor:

It’s easy to spend other people’s money. Our annual budget process is a good example of that. Again the powers that be are proposing a budget that will require our mill rate to increase at more than twice the rate of inflation. That translates into property taxes that are doubling every seven years. Runaway spending has become a bad but thoroughly ingrained habit in Newtown, and the dirty little secret is the spending on the capital side of the ledger, which just keeps piling up as debt that we will one day have to make principal payment on. We’ve become addicted to spending.

Luckily the founding fathers of Newtown put a safety mechanism in place to give the citizenry final say in the matter. April 25 is the day to cast your vote and send a message to town leaders that enough is enough. This is our last year with annual spending under $100,000,000 unless we as a community act. What we need going forward is a statutory spending cap that limits Newtown’s spending increases to the rate of inflation and change in population.

Eric Steinkraus

22 Walker Hill Road,

Sandy Hook                                                              April 14, 2006