Council To Meet May 2—

Town Budget Takes A Dive

By Jeff White

Newtown residents went to the polls Tuesday and rejected the 2000-01 proposed $68.9 million municipal budget by 219 votes, in what was the largest voter turnout for a referendum in recent years. Town officials this week were left to figure out what such a vote meant.

“It is a certainly a clear indication that [the budget] has to go lower,” said John Kortze, who chairs the Legislative Council’s finance subcommittee. Mr Kortze, who supported the municipal spending plan that was adopted by the council on March 17, said he felt comfortable with the fact that the voting process resulted in a defeated budget.

“I am a firm believer of the process, and if [Newtown residents] turned [the budget] down, we need to reduce it,” he maintained. “I strongly believe that there is no gray area there.”

Three thousand forty-five voters turned up at Newtown Middle School for the referendum vote, with 1,632 voting against the budget package and 1,413 voting in favor of it. The turnout represented 23.6 percent of the registered voters in Newtown.

As the last voters trickled into the middle school’s main gymnasium at 8 pm, town and school district officials awaiting the results expressed varying “gut feelings” on whether or not the budget would pass. As the tally was read aloud, many expressed surprise and disappointment.

“I was optimistic; I thought it was going to pass,” said council member Joe Borst shortly after the results were announced. “Obviously the voters thought differently.”

First Selectman Herb Rosenthal said that although he was not necessarily surprised by the vote, he was disappointed.

“I guess I was disappointed we didn’t provide a budget that the people of Newtown felt they could support,” he said. “Clearly this is an indication that there is a large segment of the public unhappy with [the budget].

Although the outcome of the referendum was clear, what was not clear this week was exactly why Newtown voted the way it did. Did the defeat reflect a vote against specific areas of the proposed budget — the Board of Education or the parks and recreation portion, for example — or did it indicate an overall unhappiness with the bottom line?

Legislative Council Chairman Pierre Rochman Wednesday cautioned about concluding specific messages from the town’s vote. Mr Rochman said he guessed the vote reflected that “the budget was just too high. I don’t think it was a vote against anything in particular.”

 “I think that it was a difficult budget that was put in front of the town,” school board Chairman Elaine McClure said Wednesday. “It was a very complex budget, and the complexity of it makes it hard to analyze why it was defeated.”

Mr Rochman — an outspoken opponent of the spending plan who has called the proposed budget “a mistake” — was encouraged by the vote. “I am pleasantly surprised, because I did want the council to have another shot at [the budget]. I don’t think the town liked what it was given.”

According to the town charter, the Legislative Council has seven days from the referendum date to adopt a revised budget. Mr Rochman announced this week that the town’s finance authority would hold a special meeting Tuesday, May 2 at 8 pm at Newtown’s senior center to modify the spending plan. By then, the council should be able to act on recommendations made by its finance subcommittee, which will meet at 7:30 pm this Thursday at Town Hall South.

In all likelihood, the revised budget will be filed at Town Clerk Cindy Simon’s office by Wednesday, May 3. According to the town’s charter, a town meeting must be called 10 to 14 days after the new budget is submitted.

If citizens want a machine vote, a petition signed by 643 voters (five percent of registered voters) must be filed at the town clerk’s office seven days after the new budget is filed. If this happens, the town meeting will continue, but only to set a date for another referendum. A date for a referendum must occur no more than 10 days after the town meeting.

The Bottom Line

Pierre Rochman said Wednesday that there were a number of areas in the defeated budget he would like to revisit. At the top of that list would be the Board of Education’s budget, which represented $39 million of the proposed town spending plan.

In addition, Mr Rochman mentioned he felt the $500,000 earmarked for the ball fields on the Amaral property could be addressed.

“That’s too much for two ball fields,” he explained. He suggested that the council could look elsewhere for ball fields or wait until the issue of Fairfield Hills was settled, in order to put some ball fields on that property.

Funds earmarked to maintain Fairfield Hills, should the town purchase the facility, was one other area Mr Rochman said he wanted to look at. The proposed budget has $750,000 tagged for that purpose, which Mr Rochman felt could be reduced by as much as $250,000 since the time frame for a town purchase was such that the money was not required immediately.

Leaving the polls Tuesday night, the question on the minds of some town officials was whether or not there was a magic tax rate figure that would be acceptable to the town. The budget that was rejected this week represented a 2.9 mill increase, increasing the tax rate from 27.9 mills to 30.8 mills.

“The thought of a 2.9 mill increase was too much, and they voted it down,” Joe Borst said.

Mr Borst suggested that if the council got the mill rate increase down to 2 mills, the town might approve the budget. Mr Rochman agreed.

“I think it’s fair to say that if we can get it down to two mills or under, I would be much more comfortable with that, and it would probably pass,” Mr Rochman said, but added, “It’s not just a question of the mill rate but what will be impacted.”

It is the potential impact of further reductions in the budget that have school officials worried. Representing 58 percent of the overall budget, the school spending plan stands to see some additional cuts.

School officials are concerned that further cuts could target money needed to hire teachers and technology. Moreover, the council could decide to take back some of the $500,000 it restored to the district’s budget to fund a substantial queue of capital projects.

“If you’re going to have an aggressive mill reduction, a large amount has to come out of the [school board], which is mathematically impossible,” a concerned Vince Saviano, the school board’s vice-chairman, said Tuesday night.

Although there was some conjecture this week concerning where further cuts from the budget would come from, John Kortze said he did not feel there was a target bottom line for which the council should aim.

“Is there a magical number? I’ve never thought that there was a magical number,” he said. “My guess is that two mills is probably still too high.”

Before the council begins to take another look at the budget next week, the potential tax increase might already be smaller, thanks to an additional $600,000 slated to come from the state, Mr Kortze said.

“I would hope during this go around that other members of the council would not do what they did the first go around, which was not make any suggestions. I would hope this go around that they would come to the table ready to make suggestions as to how to affect the budget,” he said.

Where Were The

School Supporters?

School supporter Joe Hemmingway was distressed and disappointed as he walked to his car through the cool air Tuesday night. The co-chair of the interest group Support Our Schools joined forces with a legion of parents during this budget season and made a regular effort to turn up at school board and council meetings.

Tuesday night left him wondering: Where were they all when it counted?

Although he had no firm data that suggested parents did not come out and vote, he figured that with close to 5,000 people with children in the school district, the school-benefiting budget should have passed without difficulty. To make sure that there would be a strong parent turnout, Mr Hemmingway called 100 households the night before the referendum.

“They just didn’t come,” he lamented. “It wasn’t that they didn’t know [about the vote], they just didn’t show up.”

Pierre Rochman noticed this too.

The vote, he said, did not reflect the large turnouts of school supporters council members witnessed during their budget deliberation. He said Tuesday’s vote concluded that those school supporters “were not representative of the town.”

Given that past years’ referendums typically have drawn 11 to 14 percent of registered voters to the polls, the fact that 23.6 percent of registered voters made their voices heard was significant.

Cindy Scheibel, the referendum’s moderator, had a simple explanation for the larger-than-usual turnout: “The money.”