Voters Will Now Decide:

Town Meeting Or Petitioned Referendum?

By John Voket

While 29.6 percent of the qualified taxpayers came out to the Newtown Middle School to cast votes on the budget May 9, the No votes outnumbered the Yes votes by 91. This second referendum failure, by local charter stipulation, presented two options for future action.

The next proposal would either go to a town meeting, where it could be decided by a show of hands, a voice vote, or a paper ballot, or a successful petition campaign could force a third referendum vote by machine.

Town Clerk Cynthia Simon explained that the council has seven days from referendum day, May 9, to submit a new budget to her office. From the day the new proposal is filed, the town clerk must schedule a town meeting within 10–14 days.

The council met May 10 and cut another $590,000 or two-tenths of a mill, tendering the latest budget proposal at $95,370,206. The council also authorized Town Finance Director Benjamin Spragg to calculate the necessary adjustments and present the new proposal to Ms Simon.

Once that new proposal is filed, any person or persons who want to petition for another referendum, instead of the budget being decided at a town meeting, may do so. Anyone wishing to petition another referendum has seven days from the date the council files the new proposal to present qualified signatures of five percent of the 15,294 registered voters, or 765 signatures.

If the petition is successful, instead of the town meeting being called to ratify or defeat the newest budget proposal, the town meeting will only set a date for the next referendum. The Newtown Charter stipulates only two referenda may be held, unless there is a successful petition campaign to hold another.

On the other hand, if the next budget proposal fails at town meeting, the council must once again meet to entertain further cuts, and according to Ms Simon, the process of setting another town meeting begins again.

“It would take a little under 800 qualified signatures to force a petition,” Ms Simon said after the failed referendum Tuesday evening. “But the petitions must be obtained from the town clerk’s office, they can’t just be made up by the taxpayers.”

Two top elected officials said they had a bad feeling about the referendum outcome when they reviewed the letters to the editor section in The Newtown Bee last week.

In more than eight years serving on the Legislative Council, both Chairman Rodgers and Vice Chairman Timothy Holian said they could not recall seeing so many letters opposing the budget.

First Selectman Herb Rosenthal said he was not as upset about the budget defeat as he was about the fact that fewer than three out of ten qualified taxpayers bothered to come out for the referendum. He recalled the last time a town budget went past two referenda was in 2003 after the last revaluation, but suggested that this year, more global economic factors played a role in the defeat of the two most recent budget votes.

“Interest rates are up, gasoline and fuel costs are up, and tax increases make it even more difficult,” the first selectman said. “When people are faced with so many rising costs they have no control over, the voters can still come out to control what the town does [with tax increases.]”