It’s Time To

Revise The Charter

To the Editor:

What we say here will little, if at all, be remembered but what we do here will not be forgotten. Future generations will live with the fruit of the seeds we are planting.

Even as recently as 30 years ago when we moved here this was a small ingrained agrarian community that seemed a throwback to the 1930s. This town was exactly what we were looking for after spending 30 years in the Midwest where we had a 100-acre cornfield as our backyard when we left. Newtowners farmed in the summer and ran the town in the winter as is done by farm communities.

Recently and suddenly the town has been overwhelmed by a group of young sophisticated, degreed, and wealthy parents with a different lifestyle. It used to be that, “When in Rome you do as the Romans do” but now it is the other way around. It seems the time has come for the town to move into the 21st Century. The basic government system must be rewritten through a charter revision. The Legislative Council can vote the charter revision.

The first selectman already has the authority over the town budget and he does a good job of it. The Board of Education also needs overseeing on their spending as of now they only have to answer to the parents of the school children and these parents are insatiable.

The budgets, both the town budget and the school budget, need to be overseen by a voted-in town first selectman or mayor who makes a livelihood by doing this job and who really wants this job and feels a love and loyalty to the community that voted him in. Hopefully, that would be the first step to stop the dissention between the school system and the other half of the town population. Also a charter revision, properly done, at this time will correct many of the inadequacies in the present charter and do away with this division in the budget vote that at present is split in half and will help make us a more pleasant town.

Sincerely,

Lillian Strickler

6 Tamarack Road, Newtown                                         April 14, 2004