Newtown’s decision to keep the same administration for another two years surely came as a relief to First Selectman Herb Rosenthal Tuesday night. His opponent, Bill Sheluck, had waged a focused and vigorous campaign to unseat the incumbent, tapping into the widespread frustration and concern about rising taxes in Newtown. After rejecting two budgets last spring and balking at plans for a new town hall at Fairfield Hills this summer, the message from the electorate this year should have been clear even before the voting started at 6 am Tuesday: things have to change.

From the vantage point of about half Newtown’s voting taxpayers, the main thing that has to change is the steady annual increase in their tax bills. Ironically, both candidates for first selectman this year advocated the municipal spending packages that were soundly defeated last spring. Next spring, most taxpayers will not be seeing the same 15–20 percent spike in their tax bills conferred on them last year by revaluation, but the town keeps growing, its new classrooms keep filling up, and its famous “fixed costs” are not really fixed –– they keep rising. (The boards of education and finance recently approved a new three-year teachers’ contract that will increase the largest of those “fixed costs” by nearly 15 percent in the next three years.) One thing is certain: property taxes will rise again.

What may have escaped many people –– especially those focused on the rhetoric of this year’s political campaign –– is that change will not be coming any time soon. The vote on Tuesday tilted in Mr Rosenthal’s favor, but even if Mr Sheluck had won, the overall impact of the policies of a different administration on local property taxes would be negligible. The largest expense by far in both the town and school budgets is salaries and benefits. When the school board proposed a $50 million budget plan last spring, about 80 percent of it was salaries and benefits. Looking for meaningful tax relief by picking through what is left over in the school and the town budgets is like shoveling the snow on the surface of an iceberg; it may warm our overtaxed hearts as we engage in the effort, but it will not save us from the deep chill of our next tax bills.

Notwithstanding the promises in this year’s campaign of better things to come, Newtowners should prepare themselves for more of the same this year, next year, and the year after that. The best solutions to Newtown’s tax problems are not short term. They include open space acquisition and the slow, deliberate development of an economic base that does not sabotage tax stabilization with additional population, traffic, and demand for services. It would also help to revise the state’s binding arbitration laws to make them fairer for towns and cities as they go about negotiating union contracts. Each of these solutions will take time to accomplish and still longer to achieve a lasting benefit for local taxpayers.

We hope that Newtown’s current administration and all future administrations, regardless of their political affiliation, will keep these goals at the top of their agenda and demonstrate the patience and perseverance needed to achieve them. Newtown’s voters will have to do the same. There is no quick fix. To suggest otherwise, even if it is what the voters want to hear, is an exercise in delusion.