Date: Fri 23-Apr-1999

Publication: Bee

Author: CURT

Quick Words:

edink-budget-voter-apathy

Full Text:

ED INK: The Six Of Seven

Newtown taxpayers will be asked to vote on a $62.1 million budget next

Tuesday, April 27. The spending proposal will require local property owners to

ante up another mill in their tax rate. If the town responds true to form,

just one of every seven eligible voters will show up at the polls, and the

budget will pass. We have to hope that the other six voters will be satisfied

with the result.

As the years go by, however, and the town's tax rate pushes ahead mill by

mill, the stakes go higher. Owners of property with an assessed value of

$250,000 will be paying more than $575 a month in local property taxes under

the proposed budget. Next year, if the pattern holds, they will pay more than

$600 and more than $620 the year after that. All this assumes, however, that

we do not add significantly to our debt load with the construction of a new

school or the purchase of Fairfield Hills, which is not a safe assumption. One

or the other of these capital expenditures is likely, and both are possible.

Our point here is not that the current budget proposal should be rejected

because taxes are too high. The Legislative Council has done an excellent job

of balancing fiscal restraint with its civic responsibility to educate our

young and to protect and maintain the town's significant investment in

infrastructure. The budget they have proposed for 1999-2000 deserves the

public support it is likely to get next week. Our worry is that the town may

not be able to sustain a responsible government when six of every seven voters

take themselves out of the democratic process that shapes and guides our

hometown.

The inexorable rise of Newtown's tax rate over the years is likely to increase

citizen interest in budgeting in particular and local government in general.

But the public outcry over a tax rate increase of two, three, or four mills a

year sometime down the line will be justified but tardy. The time to avoid

that eventuality is now.

Most of our elected officials are unpaid and unschooled in public

administration. If we do not want them to freelance solutions for our problems

in the future because they lack of public direction, the "six of seven" will

have to get involved -- the sooner the better. Like next Tuesday.