Town Meeting For The Budget

Is A Fiasco

To the Editor:

I have attended two Newtown town meetings where the topic was a vote on a large expenditure. The first was the Fairfield Hills budget vote on June 6, 2001, where I introduced an alternative proposal of $9.5 million to the $22 million town proposal which was approved. The second summer meeting was a smaller matter of $1.6 million to replace the existing outdated communications network and equipment for our police, fire, and EMT personnel. The merit of the proposals is not an issue.

The problem is that the ensuing votes were not representative of the sentiment of the town’s voting population. In both meetings, the audience was totally dominated by people who had a special interest in seeing the expenditures approved. A more disturbing fact is that the public comment was intentionally cut short at the direction of Mr Rosenthal so that Newtown residents who came to hear both sides of the issues were unable to get unbiased input from their fellow residents.

At the most recent town budget vote, there were over 14,000 registered voters in Newtown eligible to vote. Approximately 5,026 voters actually voted in the recently defeated second budget vote. The next budget vote is scheduled for a town meeting on May 20 at the Newtown High School Auditorium that has a legal capacity of 1,000 people under the fire code. This speaks to the theory that you can’t put five pounds of horsefeathers into a one-pound bag. In the case of this town meeting, the assemblage of anything close to 5,000 voters would definitely not be legal.

Because the budget is such a serious townwide issue, I call on our first selectman to request that the selectmen and the Legislative Council hold emergency meeting to “plan” for an alternative site that would legally accommodate the town voters. Since this is probably not available, they should encourage voters to sign the petitions being circulated to hold another budget referendum. This way our town government leaders can demonstrate a desire to provide equal access to all voters who want to participate in a truly democratic process. The archaic town meeting is an insult to our voters.

The $79.7 million budget should not be decided only by town employees and supporters of the Board of Education’s budget who will come early and pack the auditorium. An evening vote will discriminate against many senior citizens and mothers with children who will be unable to attend.

Barry J. Peisner, Director

Newtown Property Owners Association

34 Alpine Drive, Sandy Hook                                       May 14, 2003