The Budget: Raising The Devil

After months of gestation in little meeting rooms, the proposed 2004/05 budget needed a big room Wednesday night for its public coming-out party. The Legislative Council’s public hearing on the budget plan drew a crowd of committed advocates for education and other interests to the middle school auditorium, and all were ready to immerse themselves in the detailed facts and figures of the $85 million spending plan for their sake of their cause. The council learned what it always learns at budget hearings: the devil is in the details.

What we have learned as a town, especially in recent years, is that a good bit of devilishness comes out of the budget process. Last year the town was almost evenly divided on whether the budget should pass or not, with opponents prevailing in two referendums and proponents finally pushing a budget through in a third. In the course of those battles, emotions ran high, motives were questioned, accusations flew, and it seemed like nearly every line item was a line in the sand marking someone’s last stand. There were hard feelings all around — hard feelings that still haunted the budget hearing room this week. Education advocates came out in large numbers in an attempt to avoid a repeat of last year. With education costs projected to rise 7.3 percent and overall spending up 6.8 percent, it is safe to predict, however, this year’s budget will face renewed opposition.

As we begin this year’s budget season, we have to remember that this annual battle is just a symptom of the financial problems Newtown must overcome. The main reason Newtown taxpayers are seeing increases in their tax bills that exceed the annual increases in their paychecks is rapid residential growth. The cost of educating a child in Newtown’s public schools is approaching $10,000 a year. Every new family moving into Newtown with two, three, or four children incrementally raises the tax bills of everyone. Family by family we are drifting away from property tax stability.

Rejecting the budget until another million or two are cut from budgets of the schools, or the highway department, or the police department may raise the devil and bring some satisfaction to those wishing to exact a price from public employees perceived as the source their tax-based miseries. But shaving a mill or two from the tax rate in this way neither brings meaningful tax relief nor better government and schools.

We wish that all the pressure brought to bear on the town’s finance officials this time of year could be applied in areas that would do more good. Spending restraint is vital, and Newtown’s budget makers have been repeatedly educated on this point. But open space acquisition — more than economic development and municipal parsimony — has far greater potential to bring Newtown’s tax rate under control if it is pursued seriously now and in the years to come. Those who believe taxes are too high in Newtown should be rallying to this cause in droves. They should be demanding a doubling of the $1 million a year the Board of Finance and Legislative Council have earmarked for open space over the next five years.

This, of course, won’t happen. We are too focused on our symptoms to see the long-term cure… and too interested in raising the devil.