Budget Passes By A Wide Margin

By John Voket

Nearly 5,000 Newtown taxpayers lined up on one of the hottest days of the year so far, and helped pass the 2009-2010 town budget by a wide margin of 3,158 Yes to 1,828 No votes. According to Registrars Karin Aurelia and LeReine Frampton, traffic was steady throughout the day, but did not compare to the 2008 budget referendum, which also included a package of Charter Revision questions and authorization for funding the construction phase of a high school expansion.

A total of 4,988 total votes were cast, including 120 absentee votes that were counted. One absentee ballot was submitted blank.

Several town and school officials were on hand for the count, as well as a number of budget advocates, many of whom vocally supported the spending package in letters to the editor, at public hearings, and during budget deliberations over the past few months.

Their collective reaction was one of relief, giving way to happiness as the final tally was announced.

Superintendent of Schools Janet Robinson said while the school’s bottom line “is not enough to move the district forward,” she was “very relieved” to see the proposal pass on the first attempt.

“Now we won’t have to make deeper cuts,” Dr Robinson said.

When it came down to dollars and cents, this year’s proposal differed substantially from last year’s budget, reflecting the spiraling downward trend in local, state, and national economies. And while early on, some officials privately or publicly called for a zero-tax-increase, town and school officials worked collaboratively to achieve an outcome that would increase property taxes by just under one percent.

Legislative Council veteran Daniel Amaral was among those who pushed for no tax increases early on, but following the referendum, he was reflective.

“People saw a tax increase, but it wasn’t going up enough to make them vote it down,” Mr Amaral said, adding that the situation might be drastically different a year from now when taxpayers will feel the first affects of $38.8 million in bonding for the Newtown High School expansion.

The proposal, which was ratified by the Legislative Council March 26, reflects a net reduction of 1.66 percent in spending from the current year. Due to anticipated shortfalls in revenue, however, the amount required to be raised by taxation has increased, necessitating a marginal hike in the tax rate.

The breakdown between the two sides of the council’s adopted budget proposal for the next fiscal year reflects $37,401,767 in spending on the town side, a 5.15 percent reduction over the current year’s spending.

The school district’s portion of the overall budget stands at $66,314,928, a 0.43 percent increase over the current year’s spending. According to Newtown Finance Director Robert Tait, a tax rate of 23.43 mills on the grand list of October 1, 2008, of the Town of Newtown is needed to meet the above appropriations.

A mill represents one dollar in taxation for every $1,000 of assessed property. Mr Tait calculated the average property tax increase based on a median home assessment of $356,957 would be about $82.10.

Taxpayers may have pushed the proposal forward based on two late developments — the fact that a recent rebidding on the aforementioned high school expansion came in more than a million dollars under budget, after originally coming in more than $6 million over budget last year.

On the town side, it was announced last week that all town labor units as well as salaried town employees have agreed to take a voluntary wage freeze in the 2009-2010 fiscal year. In accepting wage freezes, the action restored taxpayer services that would have been affected by job cuts in each of the units — five unions and among all nonunion employees — approximately 180 in all.

While those job cuts would have achieved the same bottom line outcome in the payroll lines of the town-side budget, according to Mr Tait, the outcome saved several jobs in the police, highway, dispatch center, and town hall workers unions.