To the Editor:

I am writing to address what I perceive to be a gross misrepresentation in the Democrat release as published in the October 16 Bee.  The release includes a statement “Eighty-two percent of debt service (going) to the town and only 18 percent to education.”   There is just no merit in that statement.

Annual debt service payments are a result of bonds issued over a long period of time, typically 20 years.  Our history for capital debt shows that we have a 62 percent investment in schools and a 38 percent investment in other town functions. Further, our debt service payment this year, fiscal 2016, is more than $10 million, 52 percent of which is related to school projects and 48 percent for town pro-jects.  Detail shows that $5,308,269 is for previously bonded school projects at Hawley, Newtown High School, Head O’Meadow, Middle School, and Reed. And $4,798,097 is for previously bonded town pro-jects including fire trucks, police radios, animal shelter, park improvements, open space, Fairfield Hills, water mains, and bridge replacement.

To isolate one Capital Improvement Plan, such as the one under review right now by the Board of Fi-nance, and consider its debt load as separate from all the other debt we owe is a disservice to every taxpayer in Newtown. No one CIP stands alone. All of the plans have to work together to meet the needs of education and other municipal functions. For example, in 1996, we bonded nearly $35,000,000.  Eighty-five percent of that fund, nearly $29 million, was for additions on Hawley School and the High School.    That debt was so significant that no additional bonding occurred for the following four years.

If I were to use the faulty logic found in the release, I would have to say that 85 percent of the debt service for all of those four years was dedicated to schools, and almost nothing for the town.  But, I don’t see it that way, and it would be untrue. I see the CIP as a planned effort to address the capital needs of our community – town functions and schools alike. I don’t consider it a competition – or a zero sum game.

When we begin to talk and think in terms of winners and loser for our capital investments, then we all lose. Investment in school facilities is very important. And it is important, too, for us to fund park improvements, the library and Edmond Town Hall, roads and bridges, open space acquisition, new or improved facilities for police and for seniors, and more. The challenge is to work together in a non-partisan fashion to meet all those needs, according to some schedule that is fair and responsive to the degree of need, without creating an impossible property tax burden.  

E. Patricia Llodra

First Selectman

3 Primrose Street, Newtown         October 21, 2015