Separate The Town

And School Budget Votes

To the Editor:

There has always been a great deal of controversy when a budget is voted down and this year is no different. In fact there is even more debating going on this year because of the drastic cuts that were made to the education budget.

It is impossible for the Legislative Council to accurately decipher the motives behind the No votes and therefore they have no direction from the taxpayers whether to cut further or restore funds before another referendum is presented to the public.

In order for the voting public to get their message to the LC before further budget adjustments are made, it is paramount that advisory questions be placed on the ballot.

The best way to accomplish this is to have separate votes on the town and school budgets. The charter would first have to be amended to allow for separate votes and this could be done at the next Charter Revision Commission, which should be appointed soon.

The ballot could then be structured so that a Yes or No vote would be cast for the town budget and the education budget. Below the line that indicates a No vote choice (nothing would appear below the Yes vote line because it is not necessary to determine why a voter voted Yes) would be two questions. The first question would ask if the voter voted No because the budget (town or school) is too high or if the vote was No because the budget was too low.

When the tabulations are completed, a more concise summary of the voters’ reasons for voting No would be available to the Legislative Council. The voting machines could be programmed to either reject a card where a voter voted Yes and then blackened one of the No vote choices or it could be programmed to disregard any No vote reasons if the Yes vote was filled in and just count it as a Yes vote.

Another alternative way to gather advisory information is to distribute a separate paper or card to each voter, on which those that voted No could indicate their reason (too high or too low). These forms could be collected and tabulated separately and would serve as information to the Legislative Council.

The present system is not working. There are many people in town (including half of the BOE) who are now taking a stand to restore funds in a protest No vote. The Legislative Council will have no information on the public sentiment when a budget is defeated unless advisory questions are included. Both the charter and the ballot need to be changed before this town is torn apart by our lawmakers’ inability to understand the wishes of their constituents.

George Caracciolo

Schoolhouse Hill Road, Newtown                                   May 18, 2010