Finance Board Did The Right Thing

To the Editor:

Kudos to the Board of Finance who, by the admittedly slimmest of margins, did the right thing this week not to endorse the referendum for an additional $6-plus million for the high school expansion. As Martin Gersten wisely and cogently pointed out, this was not a debate between those who wanted the expansion and those who didn’t, but rather between those who want it and those who want it no matter how much it may ultimately cost.

I write this letter on behalf of the “other” constituency in Newtown, one that isn’t heard from as much or as passionately as the Board of Education / PTA folks during our annual budget debates. This constituency is euphemistically called the “senior citizens”…older townspeople, many now retired, living on fixed incomes and trying to stay in the homes they’ve owned for years. Most, if not all, of the seniors support the public schools — we recognize that it is the right thing to do; that it is part of the social contract between generations, in which the older generations support the younger, just as they were previously supported, and that the whole town and larger community benefit from a sound education system for our youth.

But, there is an important reciprocity to this contract — the seniors, who now have no “skin in the game” to derive personal benefit from the schools, are at least owed the wise and prudent stewardship of their property-tax dollars by the education community’s leadership. As has been pointed out repeatedly during the (at times) acrimonious ordeal of the expansion project, and most recently Monday night by one of the board members who voted for the referendum’s approval, that good stewardship has been utterly and painfully lacking. Examples abound: $2.75 million in architect’s fees spent without vesting the town’s legal right to the work product; an all-or-nothing approach to the school’s design, so that no scalable options have been presented as requirements and costs have changed; including a $2-plus million artificial turf and track upgrade in a project billed as necessary to relieve overcrowding and preserve accreditation, and a 15 percent cost overrun ($6-plus million) before the first shovelful of dirt has been turned.

The town voted in April to support the expansion project, although the 1,300-vote margin of approval (about eight percent of the town’s “active” registered voters) strikes me more as a sad commentary on voter apathy than an “overwhelming” show of support for the project, and the voters approved a generous budget of $38.8 million. Particularly considering these increasingly difficult economic times, this is a budget within which we can and should live. However, it has become painfully clear that, until the education leadership is directly instructed to do the best it can within these means, the high school expansion drama will continue. The finance board took a necessary and proper first step in this direction…the Legislative Council and the Board of Selectman should exercise their designated responsibilities and do likewise.

George Schmidt

12 Old Castle Drive, Newtown                              September 9, 2008