Doggone Etiquette —
New Year’s Resolutions
By Bardi McLennan
A Word to the Dog:Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â
You may not have noticed, but...
2008: People Making Newtown All That It Is
By Nancy K. Crevier
The year 2008 started out with a celebration for Stacey and Scott Lavelle of Sandy Hook, as they ...
Joseph Arconti and
Christina M. Alagna
Rosalia and Peter Alagna of Newtown announce the engagement of their daughter, Christina M. Alagna, of Astoria...
Missing Greyhound Sets Off Massive Search
By Nancy K. Crevier
There is always a sense of urgency when a pet goes missing, but in the case of their dog, Elwood, ...
Finding The Right Pace
For Environmental Leadership
To the Editor:
I had a very nice update last week on the conservation activities in Newtown from Pat Barkma...
The History Of The Washington Fire Department
WASHINGTON — The Wykeham Room of Gunn Memorial Library will host a lecture on “The Histor...
Adopt From The Animal Center
The following kittens/cats are up for adoption through The Animal Center:
TIGER came out of the woods one day, begging for some...
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).