It’s budget time in Newtown again, and people are talking about accountability, service, and even our legacy to the future. As always, behind all the words, it is the money that matters. All the talk this year is about a lot of money — $84,359,922 to be exact.

When the Legislative Council members convene their annual hearing on the town’s spending plan for 2004-2005 on March 24 at 7:30 in the Reed School, they will be faced with two realities: one looming in front of their eyes and one looming in the back of their minds. Spread out before them in the school cafetorium will be scores of citizens unhappy about “cuts” that have already been made to the budget. (Cuts, remember, aren’t spending reductions, but reductions to the increases proposed for the coming year. The overall budget is up six percent.) In the back of their minds will be the memory of last year’s budget, which was rejected twice in townwide votes before finally winning voter approval in a third referendum.

The Board of Finance has already tried to reconcile these two realities, trimming $820,000 from the proposed spending plan before it passed it along to the council. Most of the reductions came from line items in the town’s operating budget, but school supporters saw $250,000 disappear from the Board of Education’s budget request. Those cuts may help pack the house at the council hearing.

Even if 100, or 200, or even 300 people show up at the hearing next week hoping to restore money to the 2004-2005 budget, they will still have to make a compelling case. Last year, 2,500 voters steadfastly rejected a tax rate that was 1.5 mills lower than what is proposed this year, and we believe most of them are still in town and still unhappy with the size of their tax bills. Each incremental increase in the tax rate may draw even more people to their cause. Adding money to the budget at this stage would not only require a two-thirds majority vote of the council, it would motivate the sizable core of budget opponents to take back the additions and then some.

It is true that some important expenditures have been removed from the proposed budget by the finance board: $78,800 for police patrol cars, $70,000 for roads, $50,000 for the Booth Library. These are the kinds of sacrifices the town will continue to face until it can bring more stability to the tax rate in this time of rapid residential development. With that long-term goal in mind, however, the Board of Finance has decided on one shrewd investment that the council should also endorse. The $75,000 earmarked for the town’s tercentennial celebrations was diverted to finance an additional $1 million for open space acquisition. It is, in our view, a more farsighted 300th birthday present for a town struggling to retain its identity in the coming century.

While money does matter, we must resolve to spend it where it matters most. The budget currently before the Legislative Council reflects that priority and still allows us to speak credibly about accountability, service, and our legacy to the future.