When Newtown Is Not So Nice

To the Editor

Having sat through each of the Legislative Council meetings that followed the successive rejections by Newtown’s voters of the proposed budgets for FY2012-2013, I would like to offer a comment.

Each meeting has featured overwrought public participation attempting to drive home the need for increased funding for our school system. Despite an uninterrupted 14-year record of Board of Education budget increases averaging more than five percent per year, the majority of the speakers at these meetings insisted that the school’s budgeted funding level has been and still is grossly insufficient, and that more money needs to be spent. In the face of much evidence that, above a certain basic level, there may not be a direct correlation between dollars spent and the quality of education achieved, the demand is for more money, and the voters of Newtown are excoriated for their “failure to support” our children’s education. The strong impression that one gets from these diatribes is that, no matter how much money is provided, it will never be enough.

The people who bear the brunt of this unbelievably strident display are the members of the Legislative Council. Anyone who wishes to disabuse himself of the quaint notion that it’s “Nicer in Newtown” need only attend one of these meetings and stay until it adjourns. Simply stating that “we moved here for the schools” does not give anyone the right to abandon even a modicum of civility and engage in vituperative, rude, and personally insulting behavior. Who do we think we are? I would suggest that if several of the speakers last week were to see their children subjected to the verbal abuse that the council members have had to endure, they would be beating down Janet Robinson’s door demanding that she put an end to the “bullying.”

The Legislative Council consists of good people, our neighbors, all volunteers, whom we elected, who spend an inordinate amount of time and effort trying to perform the thankless task of balancing conflicting demands to create a budget, in the midst of these austere times, in the best way they know how. They are deprived, by the way, of the very information they require to do that task because Newtown, in its infinite wisdom, didn’t get off its collective, apathetic rear-end to vote in sufficient numbers to pass the charter revision allowing advisory questions on the ballot. I would ask the voters to please turn out to vote when the charter revision is again put before the public. I would also ask everyone to step back, take a deep breath, and see if we can work together in a civil manner to accept a reasonable compromise to pass a budget. If nothing else, we might all be able to look ourselves in the mirror without having to squint.

George Schmidt

12 Old Castle Drive, Newtown        June 11, 2012