On Tuesday, April 27, Newtown voters will be asked to approve the local expenditure of $84,428,722 of other people’s money.

Well, almost. If your family lives in a $400,000 house, your share will be $6,972, which is about 8/1,000th of one percent of the total, which does not even cover the cost of educating one student for one year in Newtown. Take a leisurely drive around town and have a look at the town’s seven schools, its police station, its two sprawling parks and countless public spaces, the Booth Library, the Senior Center, the recycling center, the dog pound, and don’t forget to notice the road you’re driving on. Then get out of your vehicle and take a tour through all these facilities and the warren of town offices in Edmond Town Hall, Town Hall South, and Canaan House at Fairfield Hills and introduce yourself to the hundreds of people working there educating kids, serving school lunches, directing traffic, solving crimes, fixing potholes, sweeping the roads, protecting wetlands, applying for grants, helping the helpless, issuing dog licenses, chasing stray dogs, running the sewerage plant, and maintaining the ball fields on your behalf. After a day of getting to know the town this way, it should dawn on you that you’re getting pretty good value for your money. In the end, taxes are what we pay for civilization.

What makes it an even better value is that the entire enterprise, of which your property tax dollars are such a small part, has no majority stockholders calling all the shots. No one has more of a stake than you do. No one has a right to discount your opinion, whether you like what you see or don’t like what you see, because no other opinion carries any more weight than yours when it comes time to vote on the Newtown budget. The only people left out of this process are those who voluntarily render their opinions irrelevant by declining to vote, which unfortunately included 64 percent of registered voters last year.

This year, the Board of Finance and the Legislative Council have shown that they are acutely aware that they are spending other people’s money, not by taking it as a license to spend but by taking it as a responsibility to spend wisely. Their efforts to keep the tax rate as low as possible have drawn some groups in town to question their wisdom; $250,000 removed from the school budget, $50,000 removed from the Booth Library budget, and the removal of $75,000 in seed money for the Tercentennial Commission have drawn strong complaints and criticisms. The Legislative Council’s final budget proposal, however, reflects its sincere effort to consider the interests of all of Newtown’s citizens before addressing the desires of special interests.

We recommend the proposed budget to Newtown voters. We also recommend that last year’s nonvoting 64 percent get in the game. Where else can you have an equal say in the disposition of $84,421,750 of other people’s money?