Split Budget Vote Will Bring

Clarity To The Process

To the Editor:

Since the new Charter Revision Commission has been seated, I have been hearing some talk and some rumors that the commission will not decide on a budget bifurcation amendment and will only recommend that advisory questions be added to the next referendum. This would be a mistake and will leave the Legislative Council with the same dilemma of trying to understand why the voters rejected a budget.

When the budget is presented as a total budget, including town and school, the addition of advisory questions will not provide any useful information to the council as to what part of the budget was rejected for being too low or too high. If the 2013 budget is not bifurcated with advisory questions on the school side as well as on the town side, then how will the council know where the voters wish to apply an increase or a decrease? Will the council just arbitrarily determine that a rejected total budget with advisory questions indicating “too high” or “too low” calls for cuts or additions to the school side? Or will they decide they should apply to the town side? Or both?

A bifurcated budget with advisory questions on both sides (town and school) will give the voters more input regarding their vote and it will serve as a much clearer message to the Legislative Council as to where increases or cuts should be made before the budget is resubmitted. Consider this scenario: the 2013 total budget is submitted to the voters with advisory questions. The voters reject this first budget and the advisory questions indicate by a large margin that the budget was too high. The council assumes that the voters want the school side cut so they make cuts to the school budget and resubmit to the voters. The budget is defeated again. Question: was the defeat because not enough was cut from the schools? Or did the voters originally think it was the town side that was too high? This is the dilemma facing the council if advisory questions are added without bifurcation.

There is some talk that dividing a budget will result in dividing the voters, pitting those who support more spending (particularly on the schools) against those who wish to hold the line on tax increases. This may be true, but isn’t that the whole point of having a vote in the first place? The town will not become any more divided on budget votes than it has been in recent years, but at least our elected officials will have some guidance as to how to adjust budgets based on the sentiments of the voters.

George Caracciolo

Schoolhouse Hill Road, Newtown                                   July 30, 2012