Doing Our Budget Homework

I am proud of the citizens of Winchester who attended the town meeting on Thursday, June 27. They took the time that was needed to prepare for and participate in one of the important steps in the political process that was established in the town charter. They not only attended, but also intelligently posed questions, discussed issues, proposed amendments and then cast their votes.

Two motions were finally approved during the town meeting. The first was to reduce the selectmen’s proposed budget by 2.5%. A discussion and flurry of amendments to this original motion followed. The amendments that were accepted were to exempt the revenue, debt service and education sections of the budget from the 2.5% reduction. The people’s willingness to accept these three exemptions showed their understanding of the intricacies of the budget and their intention to make the reductions in the budget fair. For example, they knew the selectmen had already reduced the education budget by $460,000 in response to the recent referendum, and that the education side could not readily accept further cuts.

A second motion was harder to understand, but those at the town meeting did grasp the reasons and approved the cuts in two line items in the "capital outlay" section of the budget—a total of some $700,000 in the education capital improvement fund and the town buildings improvement fund, which included a "public safety complex" expenditure. Some selectmen said the money for these would come from the town’s recent sale of Anthem health care stock, but several residents had letters which raised legal questions as to where this money would actually go. Town employees and others may have a claim in addition to that of the Town of Winchester.

John Gauger, Jr. and I raised another concern: that if such sums were included in the budget and approved without a specific purpose attached, the selectmen, if they wished, could use the money to build a new alternate school and/or remodel the Lambert-Kay building without holding a referendum on that issue. If these two line items had been left in the budget as written, the selectmen would have been able to dictate how the money would be spent with taxpayers left out in the cold.

The selectmen have already fooled us by refusing to honor the petition for referendum before purchasing the Lambert-Kay building, using the fiction that "It only costs a dollar." Yeah, right! Wait until the shovels are put in the ground or liability claims start flying.

Whatever your view, please vote in the upcoming budget referendum on Saturday, July 20. See you there!