2 posts from May 2008

Well, John and Iare now official New Englanders.  We have survived a full winter and our first town meeting.  Here in the towns of New England the town is run by a board of selectmen. The first selectman is kind of like the mayor, and then we have three other selectmen who also serve with him.  Many decisions are made by the board of selectmen, and the people of the town can go to their meetings and put their two cents in and call for motions and such things. But, one of the biggest things about living in a New England town that we vote on the annual budget.  Part of that is done at the annual town budget meeting.  So, last night John and I attended our first one here in Bethel.

We weren't really sure what to expect, but we really wanted to go.  So, months ago, I started trying to figure out when the annual meeting was.  I looked on the town meeting calendar - nothing.  I looked at the town charter and it said is would be during the first week of May.  Now, I thought maybe it would be Tuesday, since that is when the board of selectmen usually meet, but I still wasn't sure.  I e-mailed the town clerk. No response.  Then I discovered the minutes sections of the town website and pdf file with the notice of the town meeting saying it was Monday the 5th.  On Friday, I got an email from the school superintendent telling all the school parents about the meeting (it is in the superintendents interest to get school parents there to support the school budget).

Needless to say, I was a little annoyed by the lack of communication about the town meeting when we got there last night.  So, they read the notice telling us what we are going to discuss and vote on.  In Bethel, the town budget and the education budget are discussed and voted on separately.  This is the first year they have been separate items - they used to be combined in one vote.  The first to thing to discuss was the town budget. 

When they opened it up for comment the first person up was a man who, apparently, comes every year and says we are spending too much and our taxes are too high. (When we vote on the town budget, we are also basically voting to increase or lower (yeah, right) our property taxes.  After being told he couldn't discuss the education budget yet, he put forward a motion to remove a new position from the highway department which would cost the town $72,000. He also wanted it by secret ballot.  So, first we had to vote on whether to take the vote by secret ballot - that idea was soundly rejected.  Then the finance explained that the highway department had not had a new employee in 14 years when they lost 2 employees.  Then we stood to vote on whether the position should be cut.  The highway department got to keep their new employee.

Then someone got up and commented about the registrars, who had asked for a raise, not getting a raise of $3,000 each (totaling $6,000).  That ended up being mentioned a few times as people questioned just about every increase in the budget. 

After the registar comments I got up to have my say about the difficulty of finding out when the meeting was.  I mentioned that it took me half an hour searching on the town website to find it and that I had received  no response from the town clerk (who appears to be a nice woman by the way.)  The town clerk apologized and said she had never received the e-mail and blamed it on IT.I thanked her for her apology and said that if every person in town has to e-mail her to find out when the town meeting is going to be, she wouldn't be able to get her job done.  To that the first selectman turned to his collague and asked "It was posted in the paper,wasn't it?"  To which I responded, "I didn't realize my taxes included a subscription to the paper.  I haven't been getting that."  The he said that it had been posted on the board in the town hall.  So again I responded, "So, I have to take my two children to the town hall just to find out when the town meeting is?  All I am asking is that someone take the 15 minutes, and I've done this it only takes 15 minutes, to put on front page of the town website - Town Budget Meeting, May 5 at 7:30 at the Middle School."  To that,the people in the auditorium applauded and I sat down.  That was really fun.

We continued to discuss the town budget for most of the rest of the meeting, questioning every line.  My favorite was when they questioned the first selectman's raise.  There was a lot of comment, but no other motions on the town budget.  Then they moved on to the education budget.  I was actually surprised there was not more discussion, but the school budget only had an increase of 4%, and the largest increases were health insurance and fuel with no real new staff due to the fact that the board of selectmen and board of finance had already said the schools need to cut their proposed budget by $200,000 which will probably result in them not hiring 3.5 employees they wanted.  John asked how they got a significant decrease in one item of the education budget and what the change in enrollment would be.  The guy who likes to rail about the taxes and just cut the budgets did make a motion to cut the education budget by an additional $200,000, again by secret ballot.  The secret ballot was put down.  Now, on the motions, you vote by ayes or nays.  Normally you can tell by the sound which one passes.  So we voted on cutting the budget by $200,000 and the nays won.  But then, the ayes questioned how they determined that so we had to stand up for a head count. The ayes had like 12 people and the nays had the whole rest of the auditorium.  It was fun seeing the motion soundly quashed. 

Then we determined the date for the actual machine vote for the budget - May 20.  I then got up and requested that since it was a new date (Usually they would vote next week, but they have new machines so it will be the 20th), could they please post the new date clearly on the front page of the website.  Lisa (the town clerk) said she would have a sample of the ballot on the site. There were also requests for signs on the town square and such to let people know about the budget vote date.  I'm sure the superintendent will be sending out an e-mail about the new vote date to the school parents.

So, that was our town meeting.  It was actually fun!