Newtown’s elected leadership works hard each year to wrap up a budget package for presentation to taxpayers in the spring. The selectmen, the school board, the Board of Finance, and Legislative Council have been busy in recent weeks positioning big-ticket capital items in a five-year capital plan that accounts for many of the town’s annual costs that are not already “fixed” in existing labor and supply contracts. These capital projects, which include both the fusty (water mains) and the fun (“sprayground”), constitute the ribbons and bows on that budget package that will be unceremoniously picked at and pulled apart in the typically contentious run-up to a budget referendum at the end of April.

Thanks to a new administration committed to openness and engagement, and an information-rich finance department, Newtown taxpayers no longer have to wait for this year’s budget package to arrive. They can track it in progress online as they can most other parcels these days. (Links to the evolving Capital Improvement Plan [CIP] and supporting documentation can be found in The Bee’s online reporting at NewtownBee.com.)

Engaging the public in this way is definitely not a shortcut. Every town budget starts out as a monkey house on wheels pulled by a herd of sacred cows. Shaping it into a vehicle for advancing a common public interest requires a facility for parsing the complex and navigating emotional storms. Doing it with a motivated and divided electorate looking over your shoulder seems more like a challenge for a daredevil than an elected official. But when there is so much at stake, this is the only way to do the job properly.

This kind of political courage needs to be sustained beyond the immediate challenge of the 2010-2011 budget. The promised, yet still uninitiated, review of the Fairfield Hills Master Plan of Development will require this same willingness to engage the voters. The Legislative Council signaled last week that it stands firmly on the side of openness over expediency by undoing a “operational leasing” arrangement associated with building demolition and parking lot construction at Fairfield Hills put together by the previous administration that effectively bypassed a town vote on the project. The council vowed to prevent such end-runs around the voter in the future through a charter revision, if necessary.

The key component that will make or break this new spirit of openness is the willingness of citizens to participate in the process. We now have more reason than ever to get involved. The fiscal upheavals of 2009 have raised the stakes for every local taxpayer in 2010, from the small business owner facing rising costs and narrower profit margins to the senior citizen living on a fixed income. We are less tolerant than ever of bad investments. We do not want local, state, and federal budgets to be a place where our tax dollars go to die; we want to see a return on our investment that enhances our lives and serves our interests. We can help secure that investment by reminding our elected officials at every turn what those interests are.