Lower Voter Turnout Still Enough For Budget Approval

By John Voket

Despite a lower proportionate turnout of supportive Newtown taxpayers than last year, the proposed 2005-2006 municipal budget passed Wednesday by a margin of 539 votes. The final count posted by the town clerk’s office was 2,488 for and 1,949 against.

According to Town Clerk Cindy Simon, all but 29 of the budget votes cast were from registered voters. Those 29 others were eligible to vote because of their status as property owners on the grand list.

Polls were open from 6 am to 8 pm at the Newtown Middle School gymnasium, but by the noon hour veteran poll workers were already predicting a lower turnout than in 2004 when the budget also passed on its first attempt by more than 1,000 votes.

The approved $90 million-plus budget will fund both municipal and educational operations, and will increase local taxes by 4.8 percent to 26.1 mills. A mill represents one dollar in taxes for every $1,000 of assessed property value.

According to town Finance Director Benjamin Spragg, the town budget for the year ending June 30, 2006, is as follows:

Board of Selectmen (municipal) budget — $33,067,456

Board of Education budget — $56,938,770

Total Budget — $90,006,226

Revenues provided in the selectmen’s budget are expected to total $11,655,935 and the Board of Education’s revenue contribution stands at $4,274,840, leaving $74,075,451 to be raised by taxation.

In a prepared release, First Selectman Herb Rosenthal explained that personnel related expenditures account for 60 percent of the increase. Of those items, the projected increase in premiums for employee health insurance is $571,250, or one third of the entire budget increase. Personnel wages, including contractual pay increases, anticipated union contract negotiations for three unions, and 3.5 new positions amount to an increase of about $430,000.

Nonsalary expenditures in the highway ($139,950) and winter maintenance ($60,000), parks and recreation ($152,483), public safety ($225,533), and library ($68,000) accounts have increases that amount to $645,966, or 37 percent of the budget increase. Therefore, all of the remaining accounts in the budget have an increase in expenditures of only $99,975 above the current year.

In an interview following the vote, Mr Rosenthal said he was pleased the budget proposal passed on its first attempt, but bemoaned the low voter turnout.

“I’m always happy when voters support the budget used to pay for all the municipal services they request, but at the same time it’s disappointing that more people don’t turn out to vote,” Mr Rosenthal said. “You would think something this important would get them out.”

The first selectman observed that proportionately, a larger number of voters turned out this year to vote against the budget.

“I guess the No voters may be more motivated to vote against a proposal that raises their taxes,” Mr Rosenthal suggested.

He also praised the grassroots volunteers from Citizens For Newtown (CFN) for mobilizing a number of the voters who supported the ’05-’06 budget proposal.

“I certainly appreciate their efforts,” Mr Rosenthal said. “It certainly helps when you have a group of citizens who are dedicated to presenting a significant amount of information to taxpayers in addition to what is provided through government channels.”

Sarah Beier, co-chair of CFN, said her volunteers put out ten sandwich boards with date, time, and place of vote, coordinated reminder phone calls, hung balloons on town signs, posted lawn signs, website, and email reminders, sent postcards to every Newtown household with a registered voter, circulated letters to The Bee, encouraged attendance to budget meetings and hearings, and conducted voter analysis, participated in ongoing dialogues with town and school officials, and supported citizen participation in any way, on decisions at any level.

“All the expenses we covered out of our own budget and donations,” Ms Beier said. “Maybe that’s why it is so frustrating to see these numbers after the fact.”

She said her group was hoping to motivate taxpayers to come out in greater force than last year when more than 30 percent of eligible residents cast budget votes.

“But we see that this year, the numbers dropped again. It boggles the mind when we were facing the possibility of losing an even greater number of school and town services if the budget was turned down,” she said. “And we we’re only a little over 500 votes from that happening.”

CFN co-chair Anna Wiedemann shared Ms Beier’s frustration in an email newsletter to the group’s supporters that circulated Tuesday evening.

“The total number of voters was down almost a thousand from the previous year, with 1,949 No votes and 2,488 Yes votes. A total of 4,437 voters came out (or voted by absentee ballot) this year, and we have almost 17,000 registered,” she wrote.

Despite the low turnout, the CFN leadership was not wasting any time in calling for greater citizen involvement as the business of Newtown’s government continues to transpire throughout the coming year.

“The next steps: let’s continue to have a presence in our community decisions,” Ms Wiedemann said. “[All citizens] need to stay apprised of school and town decisions and let our leaders know what we want. This is not done by one budget vote, but rather by staying the course and representing ourselves at Board of Education meetings, PTA, Board of Finance, Legislative Council and all town meetings. Participating in our town political committees is also a necessity.”