No Split Budget

Unless You Act Now!

To the Editor:

I can go on and on about why splitting (bifurcating) the town and education budgets is the right thing to do, but I doubt taxpayers need any further convincing. In my opinion, there is overwhelming support from the public for this change to the town charter. Yet, unless everyone out there makes this clear to the Charter Revision Commission right now, town officials will get their way once again. John Godin is the commission chair and his e-mail is jgodin1312@gmail.com.

According to The Bee’s article last week about the Charter Review Commission’s first public hearing, there are elected officials trying to convince the commission not to recommend bifurcation. Remember, advisory questions (“too high” and “too low”) are only helpful if they are on both the education budget and on the town budget. Only this will give taxpayers the control we have been asking for. If bifurcation makes it possible for taxpayers to provide clear direction to town officials, why do anything less or halfway?

We have seen this spring and summer what happens when Legislative Council members resort to guessing on the combined budget. Without splitting the budgets, officials will still be able to make cuts where and however they please, just as they have been doing for years.

One of the reasons for not splitting the budgets that you may hear from officials is that it may make Newtown more “divisive.”  I’m sorry, but I don’t think that is possible. In fact, I’ll bet it makes Newtown more collaborative from the beginning. Let’s assume Newtown decides to bifurcate its budget and adds the advisory questions to each individual budget. If the budget fails on the first try, competing interest groups will know by the outcome of the referendum, which group is the real majority. No more guessing. The expectation is that the LC will make changes as directed by that majority. There will be far less to argue about, and fewer people to argue with, assuming the LC does as taxpayers direct them to with their ballot.

The divisiveness we have seen since May comes from some elected officials not listening to the public and then resorting to their own ideas as to why a referendum failed. Some have acknowledged this as the problem, and I applaud them for their honesty.

Giving the public an education budget and a town budget and the opportunity to say “too high” or “too low” only provides more information. In addition, this also puts greater emphasis on the due diligence and communication related to the preparation of the initial budget, because should it fail, all of the interest groups will know the LC will act only as the majority directs them to. 

My advice is to use caution any time a public official makes a recommendation against having more information. But unless you write to the commission right now, town officials will get their way yet again.

Kevin Fitzgerald

24 Old Farm Hill Road, Newtown                               August 1, 2012