With No ‘Effective Date’ Charter’s Future Is Uncertain
By Steve Bigham
Bill Brimmer got word this week that he could soon be...
Softball Players
Needed
The VFW Post 308 will be sponsoring a women’s softball team. Any player 21 years of age or older is invited to call Doc Syke...
Newtown Historical Society To Examine
 The Life Of President John Adams
The first President to occupy the newly built White House was John Adams. The Newtown H...
Workshop On Septic Maintenance
RIDGEFIELD –– A regional workshop on septic maintenance will be held on Friday, October 16, from 8:30 am ...
Two Omissions
To the Editor:
In our ad thanking our Newtown High School Career Volunteers, we inadvertently left out two names that were on our list.
We would l...
King Of The Fields
To the Editor:
Last week you ran an article written by Lisa Peterson about the life and times of Thunder Bay – 16.3 hands of Thor...
The production staff of Equine Affaire, Inc., is putting the final touches on plans for the fourth “New England” Equine Affaire which wi...
Rosentel Elected USB Trustee
Richard Sturdevant, chairman of the Board of Trustees of Union Savings Bank, announced the election of Stephen G. Rosentel of Newto...
Kevin Whipkey hit Tim Byrne on a 20-yard scoring pass and – with Casey Kirch adding the extra point – put Newtown ahead, 7-0, in its jun...
BOE Referendum, Round Two, UnderwayRegistered Newtown voters are heading to the polls today, for the second attempt by the Board of Education to get a budget for the 2024-25 academic year passed.Registered Newtown voters are heading to the polls today, for the second attempt by the Board of Education to get a budget for the 2024-25 academic year passed.All voting is again taking place at Newtown Middle School, 11 Queen Street. Polls opened at 6 am and will remain open until 8 pm.Following a rejection of the school budget by 507 votes at a referendum on April 23, the Legislative Council at its April 29 meeting slashed $1,408,307 from the Board of Education’s proposed 2024-25 budget.The reduction was unanimously approved by all 12 councilmen, in contrast to a previous, pre-referendum meeting on March 27, where no bottom line for the school budget drew more than a simple majority of seven votes.The new bottom line of $87,409,066 is a $2,339,415 or 2.75% spending increase over the 2023-24 budget, which places it in line with the municipal budget, which was passed by voters.The previous proposed 2024-25 BOE budget rejected by voters was $88,817,373, which would have been a $3,747,722 or 4.4% spending increase.The education budget failed, 1,701 No votes to 1,194 Yes votes.On the secondary question to the education budget — If the proposed sum for the Board of Education is not approved, should the revised budget be higher? — the responses were 727 Yes and 2,071 No.The Registrar of Voters reported 15.1% of Newtown’s registered voters participated in the April 23 referendum, with 2,952 people showing up at the middle school to vote and another 47 turning in absentee ballots.
I was the recipient of such a invasion of my privacy when my daughter was visiting her boyfriend in Waterbury. They tried to get me to pay them taxes instead of Newtown. They were rude, offensive and threatening and I had to call the mayor of Waterbury to finally get it cleared up after being threatened. It was a long drawn out process to get this overturned. Are we that broke that we have to turn our residents over to these mercenaries? This is beyond belief. How dare you hire these rent a cops to harass and threaten us?
Thanks for the quote, many people don’t realize Newtown does not exist in a silo and we have peers to benchmark against. For example Trumbull also spends less per student and outperforms us.
ALL students benefit from consistent policies and quality education. Affordability matters, especially to less affluent families which tend to skew more heavily minority based on census data.