In Search Of Fiscal Responsibility

To the Editor:

I just paid $2 for my 6-year-old daughter to get into the high school football game. The cost for the family was $18, much cheaper than a movie and we were there for about two hours. I think she had fun. But what really took place last night? I call it the “nickel and dime theory.” Last night’s $18 was a nuisance tax. Taxes like these are levied upon us all the time, usually disguised, but they’re everywhere. The high school expansion “underestimate” is another nuisance tax. It’ll get voted in somehow. We get told by all the “smart” citizens who know better than we, “It’s only going to be $X per household per year...” or some other nonsense. Maybe the tax-paying citizens will say “No,” it’ll be trimmed by one, two, three percent until sooner or later the No-voters give up and every project no matter how large or unnecessary (new town hall) will be passed.

Will our elected officials ever act with fiscal responsibility (rhetorical)? Over and over we are asked to fund some poor project, we are asked to pay contractors money they don’t earn, we are asked to pay consultants for data that presumably our elected officials should be able to research, a town official’s pet project that was (is) shrouded in secrecy and on and on. Over and over our local officials have no shame in asking the citizens to “pony up” else we lose something (accreditation?). I now have two children attending Hawley School. I couldn’t ask for a better staff, they are fantastic. But what they’re asked to live with as working conditions is a joke. We’re supposed to cry for the $60,000 garden being cut while Hawley School has no heat, no air conditioning, and no cafeteria! They eat lunch at their desks, seriously, at their desks.

A quick search on our friends to the Southeast (Oxford) shows they built a new high school for $47 million. The school enrollment is about 260 students. The cost includes parking lots, playing fields, HVAC infrastructure, furniture, a computer lab, a kitchen, etc. All of which are costs that can be minimized or eliminated in our expansion project. So what exactly is going on here in our town? When will we ever be faced with a headline that says “....came in under budget.....”? If I contracted to buy a house for $410,000 and was asked for $470,000 at closing, I’d have some questions for my lawyer. I wouldn’t go to my boss and ask for a raise, he’d laugh as the taxpayers should here. In a year or two, after the enormous cost of a poorly planned high school expansion project has been digested, we will be asked to do it again for the middle school. It will be a brand new bunch asking (hopefully) but it will happen. It won’t end until someone with guts is elected as first selectman.

Joe Duffy

5 Thomas Circle, Sandy Hook                             September 29, 2008