Put A Moratorium

On New Borrowing

To the Editor:

While the debate and discussion about the education budget has come front and center over the last several months, I believe the overall concern over the budget is the consistent increases year after year, much of which comes from continuous and unabated borrowing and the resultant debt service that becomes a fixed cost in the selectman’s budget.

Over the last several years the town has borrowed for a new town hall, school buildings, Fairfield Hills (FFH). At the same time we have incurred operating costs for mothballing the FFH campus ($400,000–500,000 per year), lease payments on the Newtown Youth Academy, subsidies to maintain the old town hall and appropriations for open space of $2 million per year, which was used with marginal benefits to the town.

At the same time we bought in to a strategy of believing that we could lease obsolete buildings at FFH for commercial buildings to provide future income to the town.

All of this costs the town $2 million per annum of fixed costs without any meaningful benefit. It also strangles the town in its efforts to reduce the budget during times of economic hardship.

Now we are forming a new committee to make new plans for FFH. This can only lead to further expenditures with marginal returns, if any.

How about putting a moratorium on any new borrowings. What if we designated FFH as our open space and tear down the remaining obsolete buildings. Let’s abandon any new committees and get serious about paring down our debt.

Then we could see more taxpayers’ funds freeing up to provide the public services our community wants and needs.

Gary Tannenbaum

36 Pond Brook Road, Newtown                                       May 26, 2010