Get The Budget Back In Out Hands
Get The Budget Back In Out Hands
To the Editor:
William F.L. Rodgers is obviously out of touch with the electorate. This is how politics works. One group comes to power and executes their agenda until it becomes untenable, at which point the pendulum slows down and starts swinging the other way. The sleeping giant is waking, and the little people in elected office might want to think about running, and I donât mean for reelection. These guys have been taking advantage of us, and they are doing it in a carefully coordinated and calculated way to keep the money machine pumping out more and more money. As an example, a friend of mine in town got a call the night before the referendum from Dr Evan Pitkoff, who was apparently running some kind of phone bank to get parents of school aged children to vote for his, and his unionsâ, pay increase. Iâm not quite sure what is wrong with that, but something is. We are paying this guy close to $200,000 to work against us.
Let me present a different spin on the low voter turn out we have had in the last two referendums. My take is that there was always a desire to try and have property taxes be reasonable. In the past, that was balanced against the desire, especially among parents with school aged children, to have the best school system possible. I think that what is happening now is that everybody is choking on the tax increases, even the parents, who wonât come out to vote against the budget but wonât vote for it either. If Dr Pitkoff had a coordinated phone campaign, then itâs not because they didnât know.
The process of holding a town meeting is the next hoop that our town leaders want us to jump through. This is designed to get what they want, more money, without having the voters get in their way. If it comes to that and you have an opinion, you need to be there. The revised budget printed in last weekâs Bee showed that they basically agreed to cut nothing, and I suspect that it will be that way again this time. On the selectmen side they cut among other things, debt service. Now how did they do that? On the Board of Education side, they wouldnât even commit to a line item cut, which means there will likely be no cut at all. If you still have the paper from April 21, lay that down next to last weekâs and try and find the cuts. While you are doing that ask yourself where you might recommend a cut. The obvious place is also the biggest; salaries and benefits. We need 800 signatures to get this thing back in our hands. I will be in the Big Y parking lot at 9 am Saturday with the petition for those who want to sign.
Eric Steinkraus
22 Walker Hill Road, Sandy Hook                             May 10, 2006