Mustering The No Vote
Mustering The No Vote
To the Editor:
I sat in on the Legislative Council meeting following the second failed budget referendum. Although I have been tough on Will Rodgers in these letters before, he ran a good meeting, although it had a less than desirable outcome. He and many town officials appear to want us to exercise our power as voters to cut this budget. The gist of what went on in the meeting is that a solid majority of the council appears to want to tax and spend as much as they possibly can get away with. What these bad actors donât seem to realize is that making a bad deal with the teachers union means that there is less money available for other spending. You have to choose, you canât have everything, at least not while we have a vote.
The time to stand and fight is now. The people I talked to on Saturday while gathering petition signatures came from all walks of life and all economic strata. Many of them have been grappling with the difficult decision of if and when to leave Newtown because of high taxes. This is something none of them should have to face. We need to stand up, get organized and get this crazy spending under control.
At the time of this letter it appears all but certain that the petition drive to force the next referendum has been successful. That being the case, the date of the next machine vote on the budget will be decided this Tuesday night. Your job if you care about Newtown is to be at the middle school on the dates set to press the No lever until the budget starts with the digits 93. That is a bare minimum. If you really want to get involved, there are going to be a series of petition drives one for each failed referendum to give us the right to the next machine vote. If 50 concerned citizens would gather 15 petition signatures each during these drives, we can run this gauntlet without too much trouble.
Cleary we are at a turning point in terms of increasing taxes at the rate we have in the recent past. The electorate canât and wonât stand for it. Keith Jacobs, a member of the Legislative Council, came out with this beauty at the last Legislative Council meeting, and it is indicative of where the majority lies. He said that if only the children could vote we would pass this budget! Thatâs right, because like Keith, the children donât have to pay the bill.
Eric Steinkraus
22 Walker Hill Road, Sandy Hook                                May 17, 2006