First Selectman Joe Borst’s reaction to Tuesday’s clean-sweep approval of eight referendum questions was, “Wonderful, this is wonderful,” adding, “This took a lot of hard work.” Given this town’s recent history in approving public expenditures, getting the taxpayers of Newtown in the mood to spend a lot of money seems to be more than hard work — it is closer to working a miracle.

The first three “money questions” on the ballot — the $105,464,444 town budget, a $1 million special appropriation for the design phase of a combined community and senior center, and a $38,826,000 special appropriation for the construction phase of a high school expansion — benefited from a massive campaign of advocacy and public information directed largely from the schools. Unlike previous years, when sufficient support for spending proposals, especially critical to school operations, was not mustered until the second or third referendum vote, this year the get-out-the-vote effort put both the budget and the all-important high school expansion project over the top on the first try. It was a lot of hard work.

The vote showed that with the right motivation, Newtowners are inclined to support essential projects. The biggest hurdles proponents of the project had to clear were the questions and doubts raised about the scale and cost of the proposed high school expansion by elected officials on the Boards of Finance and Selectmen and the Legislative Council charged with administering the town’s financial obligations. Many of those hurdles would not have existed in the run-up to this week’s vote if those boards had been kept in close consultation by the Board of Education as the plans for the project evolved. A little extra work on the front end of this initiative would have saved a lot of work on the back end.

The next big challenge for the school board will be winning town support for an estimated $32 million project upgrading and renovating the middle school. This is the project the school board approved without discussion (and apparently without even entering the vote in the minutes of its meeting) back in June 2006. The Board of Finance did not see details of the plan until last October — an inauspicious start for another major project.

We urge  elected officials on both the school and town sides of the equation not to wait to the last minute to work through the inevitable questions and concerns that are sure to arise with the middle school renovation. More hard work early on in building confidence and consensus for a project of this size and expense will result in a lot less contention down the road.