Continue Debating

Our Budget

To the Editor:

With Newtown’s 2006 budget passed by such a close vote, the budget debate should continue with the intention of creating long-term solutions to the problem of how to fund Newtown’s schools. The ever-larger vote is a good omen, as are the many letters The Bee has published on the subject.

Among the more germane was the letter calling for limits on new building. For the last 20 years Newtown’s developers, land speculators, builders, bankers and, sadly, politicians have led a housing boom that profited them mightily and stuck their neighbors with the bill. Their profits are still being paid for by our taxes.

But that is all in the past. The developers, bankers, etc are not going to give the money back. Even if they did, it wouldn’t last long because the burden they’ve left us will continue year after year after year. Which leaves us with two problems: how to pay for the damage already wreaked and how to prevent more damage.

A bold plan would have 1,000 of Newtown’s more prosperous families each buying a recently built neighboring house to knock it down or convert it into a horse barn. That is not as farfetched as it sounds when you imagine the effect of having 2,000 less students: smaller classes; an opportunity to fire most of the “uncertified” supervisory personnel listed so cavalierly in the school budget; and no need to build a new high school.

But until enough such families seize a unique opportunity to save taxes while improving their neighborhoods and causing home values to skyrocket, we’ve got to find other ways to prevent increased student enrollment so that the children already here get a good education. At the same time, we have to protect older residents struggling to live in their homes on fixed incomes.

For decades the promise of “economic development” to bring in new tax money has proved hollow. Short of convincing the State of Connecticut to fund schools directly, we’re thrown back again on the one solution that will limit future pain while we try to sort out the current mess we are in — stop housing development, particularly large subdivisions and all attempts to force denser zoning. (Such as the latest condo assault against our neighbors in Sandy Hook center.)

I am told that our elected officials maintain that stopping development would require a mandate from Hartford. If that is true, why aren’t they fighting our fight in Hartford? Or, if sensible land management can be effected on a local level, why aren’t they leading the fight locally? Starting today. In less than a year there will be another budget. And another and another.

Meantime, starting now — and this is not farfetched, but a serious suggestion to protect older peoples’ homes — Newtown should unburden all residents who have lived here more than 30 years from the two-thirds of their property taxes that go to the schools, regardless of their means. They’ve paid their share. They’ve educated their children and other people’s children. Their presence makes the town a better place to live. Their absence would downgrade Newtown into another ordinary revolving-door, bedroom stop on the interstate, and I do think that those of us privileged to live in this unique place can do better.

Justin Scott

Parmalee Hill Road, Newtown June 13, 2006