They say that God invented time so everything does not happen all at once. With the great accumulation of projects sitting on Newtown’s fiscal horizon, we should all now offer up prayers of thanks for this divine invention. Without it Newtown would be broke.

Last week, the Newtown Board of Education accepted the final report of the Climate Control Committee it appointed last year and endorsed a plan to spend $14.5 million over the next several years to improve the quality and comfort of the air in five of Newtown’s schools. Meanwhile, the Board of Selectmen and Board of Finance have been assembling the town’s five-year capital improvement plan, which anticipates tentative expenses of $29 million between now and 2008–09 for capital projects ranging from road improvements ($2 million per year for five years) to a dome for the Treadwell Park pool ($350,000). Then there is the small matter of $21 million in Fairfield Hills-related expenditures authorized by a town meeting more than two years ago.

Newtown’s finance officials now face the municipal equivalent of a long, sobering night at the kitchen table going over the bills that are coming due. That is exactly what their employers –– the taxpayers of Newtown –– have been doing, and frankly the bosses are feeling less and less charitable as the years go by.

When the whole stack of bills approaches $65 million, excluding the never-ending operating expenses that keep the Town of Newtown open for business day after day, setting priorities itself becomes a priority. Last week, the selectmen began that process by placing road maintenance at the top of the list and the Treadwell pool dome at the bottom of the list (where with any luck it will fall off).

When you cannot afford to buy expensive things, it always pays to buy a little time. Projects that may be a little too expensive today can often be pushed off into the future. Fortunately time, that great divine invention, offers vast reserves of the future. For a town that is strapped for cash with mounting bills, time can be a valuable resource, and we expect the Board of Finance will make good use of the future in setting a financial course for the town.

The figures being kicked around at this stage of the discussions are huge and, frankly, alarming. But we must remember that everything need not happen all at once. There will be things we can do and cannot do as a town. If Newtown’s leaders and their taxpayer bosses make the effort to engage each other and proceed in a spirit of both enterprise and caution, we are likely to find that many good things are possible for our community. Time, after all, is on our side.