July 6—
Hearing Set On FFH Authority
By John Voket
Residents who have concerns or comments on a proposed ordinance establishing a nonpolicymaking au...
Friday, July 1
St Rose Carnival continues, church grounds, Church Hill Road, rides 6–10:30 pm, every night is bracelet night, Fourth of July me...
Support For Survivors
To the Editor:
The Relay For Life Survivorship committee would like to thank the following raffle prize and goodie bag contributors:
Glori...
Newtown Youth Services has begun summer hours. The office will be open from 8:30 to 4:30 or by appointment.
Individual Youth and Family Counseling Available. Pl...
Newtown Seniors
Celebrate Summer
Clear skies, bright sunshine and nary a hint of humidity greeted the dozens of senior citizens who gathered from the Newtown S...
Rolling Backward
About 9:30 am June 23, motorist Lisa Cufone, 40, of Woodbury, who was driving a 2004 Jeep Grand Cherokee westward on Mile Hill Road, was s...
 Challenge Of Champions
Michael Hajzer, 14, of Sandy Hook, took a second-place trophy in the recent East Coast Tournament “Challenge of Championsâ&...
Make A Wallet With Duct Tape
BETHEL — Bethel Public Library will present a duct tape workshop for teens on Tuesday, July 12, from 2 to 3:30 pm.
Stu...
Field Notes—
Rich In Dragonflies
By Curtiss Clark
On any given summer day, jeweled airborne needles relentlessly stitch up sunny afternoons in our y...
I am sorry but $88.8 million dollars to educate 4030 kids is way out of line! That's over $22k per kid, used to be $8k per kid, the kids aren't getting any smarter, the administration eats all the cost. Time to cut the budget by 20% and also cut the $225k salary of the superintendent and $193k of the superintendent assistant ! You can get a lot of teachers for $400k wasted for 2 overpaid positions. Common sense should tell you that spending $2.5 million per every week for population less than 30k people is just way too high! Also voting should be done by mail, enough with these nonsensical referendums where barely 16% of voters show up. 51% voters approval should be MANDATED!
Who have you asked that didn't know where to cut? Its easy. Ideally, you would start with section 100 of the budget but the union prevents that. So I say you turn to page 18, put it on your dart board, and start reducing the head count. It's all you can do when the union controls the budget.
The people have spoken, time to sharpen your pencils. If we look at the town budget for guidance the BOE should cut the budget from 4.4% to 2.75% I find the voting results very interesting ... We have approximately 4,030 students in our town, with a published 12:1 ratio which means we have 335 teachers. I would love to know the actual number if someone knows. If we account for their spouses that gets us very close to the number of people who voted yes for the budget and wished it would be higher (729).