Qualified Newtown taxpayers who wish to cast 2022 budget votes by absentee ballot now have expanded qualifications available to them.
On April 8, Governor Ned L...
Occupation: I am the Director of Education at Keeler Tavern Museum & History Center.
Family: My husband is Zach Houston, and I have three sons: Micah, S...
The Catherine Violet Hubbard Animal Sanctuary (CVHAS) and Newtown Senior Center co-hosted a Pet Wellness Clinic on March 27.
“It really was a nice way to see th...
Members of Women Involved in Newtown (WIN) gathered at the Monaco residence in Sandy Hook on April 5 to assemble over 150 Easter baskets.
According to WIN Co-Pr...
On Saturday, April 30, Newtown Police Department and other law enforcement agencies nationwide will partner with the DEA for the 22nd Drug Take Back Day.
Reside...
Like so many others around the world, Newtown residents are continuing to do everything they can to help residents of Ukraine, whose country has been under atta...
Each week we compile a list of some of the most-read stories published at newtownbee.com. Here is a roundup of the week’s top stories, based on the number of pa...
UPDATE: This report was updated at 11 am on April 16 to provide further details on this incident and suspect.
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A Danbury man was arrested ...
To the Editor:
The Wharton Equity Partners proposal for a MEGA Warehouse/Tractor Trailer HUB at Exit 9 is an assault on our Town.
Invasive on so many levels fro...
Pick up any weekly edition of The Newtown Bee going back many decades, and you will find only a handful of headlines like the one we ran on March 25, 2022, afte...
BOE Referendum, Round Two, UnderwayRegistered Newtown voters are heading to the polls today, for the second attempt by the Board of Education to get a budget for the 2024-25 academic year passed.Registered Newtown voters are heading to the polls today, for the second attempt by the Board of Education to get a budget for the 2024-25 academic year passed.All voting is again taking place at Newtown Middle School, 11 Queen Street. Polls opened at 6 am and will remain open until 8 pm.Following a rejection of the school budget by 507 votes at a referendum on April 23, the Legislative Council at its April 29 meeting slashed $1,408,307 from the Board of Education’s proposed 2024-25 budget.The reduction was unanimously approved by all 12 councilmen, in contrast to a previous, pre-referendum meeting on March 27, where no bottom line for the school budget drew more than a simple majority of seven votes.The new bottom line of $87,409,066 is a $2,339,415 or 2.75% spending increase over the 2023-24 budget, which places it in line with the municipal budget, which was passed by voters.The previous proposed 2024-25 BOE budget rejected by voters was $88,817,373, which would have been a $3,747,722 or 4.4% spending increase.The education budget failed, 1,701 No votes to 1,194 Yes votes.On the secondary question to the education budget — If the proposed sum for the Board of Education is not approved, should the revised budget be higher? — the responses were 727 Yes and 2,071 No.The Registrar of Voters reported 15.1% of Newtown’s registered voters participated in the April 23 referendum, with 2,952 people showing up at the middle school to vote and another 47 turning in absentee ballots.
It is a shame but yes, we are so broke... The NIMBY crowd will not allow any new development so there is no ability to add to the tax base... got to hire strangers to park at our schools, and grocery stores and sneak around on our property to ensure our kindergartners Spanish class doesn't get canceled.
I was the recipient of such a invasion of my privacy when my daughter was visiting her boyfriend in Waterbury. They tried to get me to pay them taxes instead of Newtown. They were rude, offensive and threatening and I had to call the mayor of Waterbury to finally get it cleared up after being threatened. It was a long drawn out process to get this overturned. Are we that broke that we have to turn our residents over to these mercenaries? This is beyond belief. How dare you hire these rent a cops to harass and threaten us?
Thanks for the quote, many people don’t realize Newtown does not exist in a silo and we have peers to benchmark against. For example Trumbull also spends less per student and outperforms us.
ALL students benefit from consistent policies and quality education. Affordability matters, especially to less affluent families which tend to skew more heavily minority based on census data.