Budgets, Charter Revisions, Parade Controversy Drew Headlines

By John Voket

Looking back on issues related to this year’s core government agendas reveals a lot of planning, as well as figuring out how to pay for the projects officials planned so well. The Year 2006 also saw a Charter Revision Commission seated, hitting the ground running with a goal of streamlining government while addressing a raft of charges touching upon virtually every aspect of Newtown’s government operations.

The headlines included news of new ordinances, debt caps, Bothwell’s projections, and a heartfelt au revoir to Newtown’s Legislative Council Chairman Will Rodgers, who volunteered for Marine Corps reserve duty in Iraq. And with an eye on taking better care of the community’s health and well-being, 2006 saw progress on mergers among Newtown’s Health District and two local service agencies as well as a rapid escalation of uninsured patients taking advantage of services at the local free medical clinic.

To Your Health

January 1, 2006, saw the completion of an initiative that was proposed in 2005, the merging of the Newtown, Bridgewater, and Roxbury health agencies into a single regional Health District based here in Newtown and overseen by Donna Culbert. The merger came about because the new member towns were interested in offering full-time public health services to their residents.

The Health District merger provided a new district sanitarian who previously served Bridgewater and Roxbury. As of January 1, all three member towns were able to take advantage of the expanded services of a full-time health director, one full-time administrative assistant, three full-time sanitarians, a part-time food service inspector, and a volunteer medical advisor. The expansion provided additional opportunities to increase health education and public health nursing services as well as eligibility for potential increased grant funding.

Newtown’s volunteer-driven public health clinic, Kevin’s Community Center continued to show growth. On the positive side, the center continued to draw from a growing base of philanthropic efforts and grants to aid both its week-to-week operations and its long-term development goal of creating a freestanding facility in town.

On the other hand, KCC’s escalating growth of new patients signaled a disturbing trend: more and more adults in Newtown were being financially squeezed or downsized out of their own personal health plans. The clinic, and its founder Dr Z. Michael Taweh, also launched a public health outreach program which is predicted to flourish in 2007.

The plan to merge Newtown Youth Services and Family Counseling Center also moved forward progressively in 2006, with final approval for a merger being gained by both agency’s respective boards in June. While each separate organization continued to operate programs and offer respective services to a growing number of local individuals and families, staff and volunteers concurrently worked toward determining which agency would handle specific programming.

By November, several programs had successfully merged and were operating successfully, and FCC Executive Director Beth Barton was invited to oversee the new merged agency as the respective organizations work to finalize all collective programs and services by July 1, 2007.

Ordinances Handed Down

The year proved to be a busy one as the Legislative Council ratified several ordinances. While the Board of Selectmen used its first meeting of 2006 to approve the formal creation of a local Cultural Arts Commission, priority matters prevented the council’s ordinance subcommittee from recommending a final guideline for seating the new committee until the fall.

The council ratified another ordinance in the spring altering the personnel and mission of the existing Conservation Commission, and at the same time creating an Inland Wetland Commission. The newly formed body was designed to address the protection of local wetlands and watercourses; review forest practices applications; to serve as the town’s aquifer protection review agency; and to act as the local agency administering the state’s aquifer protection regulations.

The new Conservation Commission could now focus its energies on protecting natural and scenic resources, streams and water supplies; conserving wetland areas; preserving and indexing open space areas; creating opportunities for public recreation; preserving historic sites; implementing the 2004 Town Plan of Conservation and Development; and promoting “smart growth.”

September also saw a new ordinance governing the control and cleanup responsibilities owners must exercise over their pets on public and town-owned properties; an expansion of the governing ordinance of the Board of Assessment Appeals to accommodate expected appeals following the townwide revaluation in 2007; and an amending of the Supplemental Veteran’s Property Tax Exemption to maximize benefits for resident veterans.

In the final weeks of 2006, the Board of Selectmen passed another contentious ordinance proposal regarding the approval and installation traffic calming devices to the council for consideration in the new year.

Rodgers’ Duty Called

Part of the year found the Legislative Council convening sans a familiar face at the chairman’s seat. In June, council chair Will Rodgers announced he would be volunteering for active Marine Corps Reserve duty in Iraq for at least six months. The reservist, who also manages a busy legal practice along with his wife Moira, first attended several weeks of training, during which he broke a bone in his foot.

But the setback did not stop Colonel Rodgers from recovering and shipping out ahead of schedule in August to a base of operation where he carried out his mission of working with the community members, tribal factions, and political leaders negotiating damage settlements as well as providing support in diplomatic and infrastructure matters.

In reports back from the Far East, Col Rodgers reported sitting in on a sentencing hearing for Saddam Hussein, as well as temporarily enjoying the creature comforts while staying in Saddam’s palace in Baghdad. A year-end letter published in The Bee noted that the Newtown native was looking forward to returning home. He is expected to wrap up his tour of duty in time to be back for the 2007 budget deliberations.

Third Budget A Charm

By the end of January, local leaders were formulating the details of a 2006-07 budget proposal that eventually failed twice in separate referenda before a third proposal was approved in late May. Early deliberations revealed a proposal to create two full-time paid firefighter positions to enhance response for Hook & Ladder, as well as Sandy Hook apparatus during weekday hours when volunteer ranks are stretched thin.

Discussions about options for expanding the existing high school or building a new facility also loomed over the deliberations with estimates from $20 to $150 million creating a challenging atmosphere for elected officials attempting to plan for future spending.

By the second week of March, the finance board was ready to recommend a combined spending package in excess of $96.5 million that would raise the property tax rate to 27.8 mills. After hearings and deliberations, the Legislative Council further trimmed the budget proposal by one-tenth of a mill, or $96,522,106.

The public’s first pass on the proposal came April 25, when the budget was defeated in a referendum vote by 53 votes. A total of 2,483 voter were cast — 1,715 votes in favor of the plan and 1,768 votes against.

The council further reduced the spending proposal by $295,000 and set a second referendum. The May 9 budget referendum also failed, this time by 91 votes.

Several town officials who gathered to hear the final tallies in the second ballot suggested that comments made after the previous referendum failed by 53 votes, claiming that representation of voters was “statistically insignificant,” angered many who felt squeezed by the prospect of paying more than six percent more in property taxes in the coming year.

While a third proposal would have gone to Town Meeting by Charter stipulation, a petition drive forced a third budget referendum on May 30. That proposal finally passed with supporters outnumbered those in opposition by 192 votes.

The approved spending package of $95,370,206 went into effect July 1.

Charter Revision Commission

Just a couple of weeks after the new budget proposal was ratified, the Legislative Council seated a six-member panel of volunteers and charged them with improving and amending Newtown’s constitutional document. Following a recommendation of nine members from a nominating subcommittee, the full council endorsed a six-member panel, which included two former Charter Commissioners, Al Cramer and Joseph Hemingway, who were subsequently elected chair and vice chair of the newly seated group.

Town Registrar of Voters LeReine Frampton, Carolyn Signorelli, Joan Plouffe, and Guy Howard were also approved as Charter commissioners. The group got down to business setting up ground rules for its meetings, creating assignments and scheduling various town officials to come and help educate commissioners about the various roles played by selectmen, council members, the finance board, finance director, Board of Education, Planning and Zoning, and the town attorney, who was also tapped to represent the Charter Commission.

As the panel continued its weekly meetings into the summer, priorities were formulated and timelines set for the eventual culmination of the revision process. Commissioners decided early on to work diligently, but ruled out the possibility of presenting a finished revision to voters by the November election.

Throughout the process of discussing and endorsing proposed reforms, Charter commissioners remained mindful of trying to encourage Newtown’s significant base of unaffiliated voters to become more active participants in town government. Another major concern introduced by Mr Cramer in August were the apparent inconsistencies between the current Charter and the voting rules of the Legislative Council.

“Your voting on the Legislative Council is a humongous mess,” Mr Cramer pointed out to acting council chairman Timothy Holian. “I think we should recommend you have two-thirds voting when we require eight affirmative votes, and a majority of at least six affirmative votes [on all others].”

In mid-September, the Charter Commissioners voted to maintain a mayor-council form of government, while eliminating the three-member Board of Selectmen. But shortly thereafter, Selectmen Joseph Bojnowski and William Brimmer, Jr, appeared before the panel making a case for a three-member board to continue, and after further consideration the Charter commissioners recanted.

Another matter of contention which faced the commissioners in November was a proposal to eliminate the Board of Finance and roll its members back into an 18-member council with a separately elected finance subcommittee. While discussion on that proposal continued to year’s end, a more likely resolution of renaming the Board of Finance seemed to gain traction.

The alternate plan, voiced by Mr Cramer, would permit a finance advisory panel to be governed by the Charter instead of by rules set out in state statutes. The year ended with another significant proposal on the table: to increase the number of Board of Education members to nine, representing three separate three-member districts, mirroring the council.

While the initial proposal was approved by a quorum super-majority of four commissioners, a strong opposition to the move by Ms Plouffe and Mr Howard reopened discussion on the issue, with plans to reconsider the matter in early 2007.

Finance And Selectmen

While the Board of Finance administered tens of millions of dollars of oversight in 2006, the single most significant issue dominating virtually every meeting was the proposed high school expansion. After the school board considered six proposals from renovating on site to creating a second smaller high school, the final decision to move forward with a $47 million expansion of the existing facility came to the fore by early fall.

While the preceding months saw the Board of Finance preparing as best it could for the eventuality of Newtown considering its single largest single capital expenditure ever, its members also sought collaboration by calling joint meetings first with the school board and selectmen, and then with the Legislative Council.

After all was said and done, the council recommended financing a project to address student population projections supplied by educational consultant Dr Bruce Bothwell. The finance board along with town Finance Director Benjamin Spragg then moved forward addressing a Capital Improvement Plan that would allow for other major projects to move forward while maintaining a self-imposed debt cap of ten percent of the overall spending package.

The Board of Selectmen, meanwhile, spent part of the latter half of the year discussing a proposed long-range planning committee that would look beyond the five-year CIP, instead accommodating growth projections and their implications on municipal and educational capital projects extending out 20–25 years. By late summer, selectmen had reviewed long-range plans supplied by several similarly-sized communities in Connecticut, and as the end of the year arrived, were looking forward to hearing from at least one local town official whose community had adopted a similar panel several years ago.

In other business, the Board of Selectmen continued on its mission to help preserve open space in town through a combination of outright land purchases, as well as negotiating development rights and conservation easements with property owners. By year’s end, several hundred acres had already been preserved thanks to the two-year-old initiative funded by a $2 million per year authorization.

Parade Controversy

Newtown briefly held a spot in international headlines in late summer as a minor local political gaffe erupted into controversy. The brouhaha began when a member of the local Democratic Town Committee issued a letter of invitation to US Senator Joseph Lieberman to march in the town’s annual Labor Day Parade.

Since Mr Lieberman had lost a Democratic primary to upstart candidate Ned Lamont, and subsequently announced he would challenge Mr Lamont as in Independent, First Selectman Herb Rosenthal felt, under those circumstances, it would be inappropriate to have the sitting senator join the invited and duly elected Democratic contingent in the parade.

“[Sen Lieberman] was privately and publicly asked not to run by many state Democrats, and decided to run anyway even after he lost the primary. Philosophically, I have a problem with that,” Mr Rosenthal said. “And I’m not going to reward that behavior by marching beside him on Labor Day.”

Within a few days of a Newtown Bee article on the issue, statewide and national press organizations began picking up on the story, generating the appearance of numerous unfamiliar press representatives and a huge satellite transmission truck stationed at the flagpole during most of the Labor Day activities.

And while virtually all the invited politicians were greeted by parade viewers with polite applause and greetings, many repeatedly complained that the extensive politicking and in-your-face campaigning was detracting from the experience many families came out to enjoy.