Council Sends Charter Revision To Voters

By John Voket

November 6 will be an important day for Newtown voters. They will not only get to weigh in on a presidential candidate during Election Day voting, but a fundamental change to Newtown’s governing charter document as well.

On August 29, the Legislative Council unanimously accepted a recommendation by the latest Charter Revision Commission, and subsequently approved sending those proposed changes to a public vote sharing same ballot as the presidential contest this fall.

Voters will be asked to respond to a single question that encompasses several points related to Newtown’s annual budget approval process.

The question, whose language will be deliberated and approved by the council September 5, will ask voters to consider whether to split binding budget approvals between the school district’s request and the municipal operations request, which also includes all annual debt service on bonding; add nonbinding ballot questions to inform the council if one side or the other fails; and to eliminate a charter provision on town meetings related to the budget process.

The latter point means that any failed part of the budget will continue to go to machine referendum until it has passed. Currently, the charter sends any failed budget to a town meeting after a second rejection — and it is up to a petition process or the Board of Selectmen to authorize sending those subsequent budget proposals to a machine vote.

During a presentation of the commission’s final recommendations and vote, charter panel Chairman John Godin said throughout the expedited research and deliberation review process he tried to “put on three hats: one as a taxpayer, one as a legislative council member, and one as a market researcher.”

Mr Godin said the commission’s ultimate goal was to help the council understand the voters’ intent in the event of a failed budget, and to get the local budget requests to pass. He also referenced the fact that two towns with split budgets the panel studied, Simsbury and Madison, often or always passed budgets on the first attempt — and both have AAA bond ratings.

Binding Or Nonbinding?

The charter commission chairman also noted that in the final deliberation phase, the charter commissioners really wrestled with the question of making a split vote binding or nonbinding.

Committee Vice Chairman George Coleman reminded the council that in the event the proposed revision is approved, it would require sufficient revenues to be generated to meet any part of the budget that fails, and where answers to the ballot questions indicate taxpayers want to see the failed budget request increased.

Council Vice Chair Mary Ann Jacob later returned to that issue, clarifying that in the event taxpayers reject a budget and respond that it is too low, those taxpayers are in effect advising the council to return with a new proposal that will increase taxation.

Both Mr Godin and Dr Coleman responded that Ms Jacob’s assertion was correct.

Commission member Robert Hall asserted that the current panel also took up a number of discussions that he hoped would carry over in the form of a charge to another charter commission in short order. One of those ideas was to consider adding a list of appropriations for bonding on each budget ballot, to help define how much of the bottom line on the municipal side was devoted to committed debt service.

Responding to a question by council member Kathryn Fetchick, Mr Godin said his commission also considered whether to cap the number of referenda before a repeatedly failed budget reverts to its previous year’s allocation.

“We started deliberating that, but decided to leave it to a future charter commission. There are several options after multiple failures,” he said.

Charter Commissioner Michelle Ku briefly introduced information from a Hebron town study on bifurcating its budget, and learned that splitting the proposals did not reduce the number of failures. Ms Ku’s previous research also showed that over the course of 85 budget votes in communities including Newtown that employ or employed budget questions at one point, only one failed because voters claimed the budget was too low.

“It was the Board of Education side in Newtown,” Mr Godin said, referring to a period in the late 1980s and early 90s when Newtown offered budget questions. He said that while history is sketchy, the town likely struck those questions at one point because towns cannot split questions on a unified budget.

Split Budget Stats

Mr Godin told the council that 28 Connecticut towns have split budgets, according to details he recently received from the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities. And that among nine towns where data was immediately available, over a six- to seven year timeframe, 29 percent of town-side budget requests failed versus 42 percent of school budgets.

Referring to several of the towns where split budgets typically pass year-after-year on the first attempt, First Selectman Pat Llodra referred to information the charter commission discussed about the spirit of cooperation between town and school officials. Mrs Llodra said in Newtown’s case, she would like to see much more guidance from the council and finance board earlier on in the budget formation process.

To that, Council Chairman Jeff Capeci responded he is already prepping for a combined meeting of the Boards of Selectmen, Finance, and Education and the council in October to help frame next year’s budget process.

During a brief public hearing before the special council meeting August 29, only one resident addressed the proposed charter revision. William Thiessen asked that the rationale behind the final recommendation’s language be explained, as well as why the charter panel proposed the final wording of budget questions.

During the course of the meeting, a number of council members, as well as Mr Godin, praised his fellow commissioners for their efforts. Mr Godin said he estimated that over the four weeks his group had to research and render a proposal, each commissioner put in about 200 hours of work handling his or her part of the research and development of the final revision recommendation.