Time To Change The Way

We Approve Budgets

To the Editor:

The voters have spoken, and the decision is to cut the budget and ask the voters again. Whether the vote approved the budget or not, it is extremely unfortunate that our budget is being decided by a very small number of committed voters. After watching budget referenda in Newtown for 16 years, I’ve come to a conclusion that perhaps it’s time that we approve our budget differently.

I supported the idea of advisory questions, but the fact is, understanding the preference of 20 percent of the voters doesn’t tell us much. I believe we should consider going in the opposite direction.

I don’t always agree with our elected leaders, but they are elected to represent us, and if we don’t like the results of their decisions, we can replace them every two years. Between the Boards of Selectman, Education, Finance, and the Legislative Council, we have 28 committed, elected officials who spend several months building each annual budget, with plenty of checks and balances between them. The final arbiter of the recommended budget is the Legislative Council, which has 12 representatives covering our three districts.

Why not let them decide our budget? Why force the expense and pain of multiple town-wide budget referenda every year? Why have a representative government with officials who will almost always show up and who dedicate their time to understanding the details of a budget for us — for months — and then allow a small minority of voters to overturn their recommendation?

This is not a novel idea — it’s how the vast majority of communities decide their budgets across the United States. While I am a strong proponent of keeping decisions close to the voter, the reality of a community our size is we cannot and are not always fully engaged, and we should consider putting more emphasis on the citizen volunteers who we elect to office every two years. Having the ability to vote for 28 engaged, committed people to represent my opinions is good enough for me. And rather than trying to educate and engage the population to vote up to four times a year as budgets continue to fail, we could focus our energy on one town election every two years. Imagine how different last year’s budget process would have been, not to mention what we appear to be doing this year, as we head into our second of who knows how many town-wide referenda.

Unless someone can figure out how to engage more voters in this annual, painful process, I think some kind of change is needed.

Tom Bittman

17 Rose Lane, Sandy Hook                                             April 27, 2011