“What’s Your Beef With Sending The Budget To Referendum?” An Exasperated Reader Asks

Categorized | Around NH, Budget

“What’s Your Beef With Sending The Budget To Referendum?” An Exasperated Reader Asks

Posted on 20 April 2011.

Editorial By: Maria Moore

“What’s Your Beef With Sending The Budget To Referendum?”

An exasperated reader asked our editor. Here’s her response in an editorial:

OK, let’s get this clear: My beef isn’t the fact that the selectmen send the budget to referendum. It’s that they take away the taxpayers’ ability to go through the budget line by line BEFORE sending it to referendum. And this is something they’ve come up with themselves, it’s not the result of an ordinance as everyone seems to think. And it’s been happening for 15 years. Time to put an end to it.

This is my understanding of the situation – with some help from a few people in town who understand it because they’ve watched it develop over the last 15 years.

An ordinance was passed in 1990 which sends a budget to referendum as opposed to voting on it at a town meeting. This was done because a very active taxpayers’ association at the time wanted to have the vote on the budget moved to referendum where they thought they stood a better chance of getting the kind of budget they wanted rather than at the Annual Budget Meeting.
The ordinance specifically says that taxpayers get to discuss the budget (state statute says “consider” the budget, same difference), making changes to the line items downwards or removing all funding from line items (again, per state statute). The ordinance then says that the budget (that’s been “fine tuned” at the Annual Budget Meeting) is sent to referendum.

That’s what’s supposed to happen under this 1990 ordinance. No problem with that.

This is where the problem lies:

At a Board of Selectmen meeting (always seems to be a Special meeting so no public comment is allowed) the selectmen REMOVE THE CONSIDERATION OF THE BUDGET at the Annual Town Meeting. They have made the only business of the Annual Budget Meeting to send the budget to referendum. The step before sending the budget to referendum – consideration by the taxpayers – is no longer happening.

So we have an Annual Budget Meeting with no budget to consider. No wonder no-one shows up for that meeting.

Could it be that the selectmen and the Board of Finance find it more convenient not to allow taxpayers their statutory right to have the final say on the budgets by “fine tuning” – adjusting the line items – in the two budgets (local government and local elementary schools) before they’re sent to referendum?

What do you think? Since they’re removing the consideration (discussion) of the budget by taxpayers at the Annual Budget Meeting, this is what we’re allowing to happen:

The Board of Finance feels comfortable discounting taxpayers’ input on the specifics of the budget and on the issue of a tax increase (or not) for the budget.
The local elementary schools’ Board of Ed feels comfortable presenting budgets with huge increases compared to the town’s and Regional # 7′s budgets. In the budget that’s currently in process, the local Board of Ed has a 25% increase in Special Ed costs vs. Regional’s 4.2% Special Ed. increase. I know the argument of the high-cost Special Ed student that’s just moved to town, but Regional too has a high-cost Special Ed student that they’re bringing back to Regional this year. Can the Board of Finance do anything about the local schools’ budget? No, BOF members can’t go in and change the BOE line items. Only the BOE members can do that AND the taxpayers during the Annual Budget Meeting – but every year the selectmen take away the taxpayers’ ability to consider the BOE budget, thereby removing the checks and balances that the process formerly provided!
And the town government budget? The First Selectman feels comfortable putting $140,000 into Brown’s Corner and the Field House roof and a Rec Study without even presenting estimates of what the work will cost. And the $25,000 to begin repairs of the septic system at Berkshire Hall (a short distance from the waters of the lake)? Cut from the budget. And what does the Board of Finance do? “The town’s come in at 0%” we hear them say, and they don’t touch the town’s line items, although they can. And the only other group that could cut the town government’s line items, the taxpayers? The selectmen keep taking away their right to do that at the Annual Budget Meeting, another set of checks and balances that has been gotten rid of.

So that’s my beef: The system that the BOS and the BOF have established over the last 15 years allows them to have full say on the specifics of the budget, leaving the taxpayers only the ability to vote for or against the whole budget at referendum.

And how has this been allowed to happen? It’s not because of an ordinance passed in 1990 and it’s not because of State Statute. Both of those allow the taxpayers to discuss and change the budget line items at the Annual Budget Meeting.

It’s because we allow it to happen. Every year the selectmen strip the taxpayers of their power to have the final say on the specifics of the budget they’ll be voting on. And we allow that to happen.

But this year, Bob and I have stood our ground and have challenged this recent development in our town governance. We’ve been encouraged by those taxpayers among us, Republicans and Democrats, who can remember back more than 15 years when they would go to Pine Meadow Elementary School – before Town Hall was expanded – to discuss, and suggest changes, and yes, change line items in the budget that the majority didn’t like.

And that’s the budget process we want to follow, without having the selectmen block it every year.

_______________________________________

This year’s Annual Budget Meeting will be held this coming Tuesday, April 26. The selectmen met this past Monday at an 8:00 a.m. Board of Selectmen Special Meeting at which they removed the consideration of the budget at the Annual Budget Meeting (Item # 1) from the Notice (call) of that meeting; see our April 18 report Selectmen Meet To Set Annual Budget Meeting, Remove Consideration of Budget At That Meeting, Set Referendum Date.

To read the 1990 Ordinance and the State Statute Sec. 7-344, see our April 6, 2011 report Request To Return To Consideration Of Proposed Town Budget At Annual Budget Meeting: Letter To BOF.

To read our editor’s report of last year’s Annual Budget Meeting, see our April 27, 2010 report Town Annual Budget Meeting, A Meeting Of No Substance And No-Shows, Scheduled For Tonight.

'Town Meeting' by Norman Rockwell.

Joe G

– One correction, the town meeting cannot change line items in the BOE budget (not even the local elementary district budget). Only the BOE can do that.

– About the NH+ criticism that the BOF is “discounting taxpayers’ input” this budget season, I disagree. It’s been an open, intelligent debate of the town’s budget situation. The BOF has highlighted public input at various stages and made significant cuts in the budget in response to taxpayer input. They did end up compromising, on a split vote, on the overall level of cuts. It’s true that BOF members tend to defer to the BOS and BOE on line item allocations. But I would view that more as a healthy recognition of the BOF’s role in town government. It reflects deference to voters’ choices (in elections) on who should decide operating details and priorities for the towns and schools. The BOF also appears to have a healthy appreciation for the fact that NH+ crew-members have exactly zero votes behind them. NH+ is not the final arbiter of the will of the people.

– Another correction, local elementary district spec ed costs in the proposed budget are not increasing 25%. It’s about half that rate of increase. I questioned that figure in an earlier NH+ post.

– Regarding the comparison of two complicated spec ed cases between R7 and the local district, that’s an extremely weak, anecdotal case for evaluating the two special ed departments. Even at that, you need to keep in mind that New Hartford’s situation involves an inherited program, determined by an outside school district. Once the student is in New Hartford schools there may be something they can do about it. From the sounds of it the R7 case involves a placement that they have owned for a period of time and have had the time to develop an in-house placement option.

– I would be fine with returning to a town meeting vote on the budget if we did away with the automatic referendum practice, and allowed some time for word to get out that the budget will be decided in whole and detail at the town meeting. Othwise I think you risk having special interest groups sneaking in and ramming something through.
William Jenkins

Your opportunity for public input is at the public hearing held by the Board of Finance or did you either forget about that or maybe not even aware of it?

After that, the Board of Finance “fine tunes” it to use your words, then approves it, sends it to the Board of Selectmen who approve it and then that whole budget goes to a referendum. At that point, you don’t get to “fine tune” it because it can’t be changed, it either has to be approved or disapproved

If you don’t like the budget, vote against it at the referendum. If the budget fails the Board of Finance and the Board of Selectmen have to “fine tune” it to get it to pass. If it passes the first time out then you’re complaints and concerns are obviously not shared by a majority of the voters.

http://newhartfordplus.com The NewHartfordPlus Crew

The public hearing is indeed an opportunity for public input. NewHartfordPlus attended that meeting and posted the video of that meeting on YouTube as we have done with all the more important budget meetings. You can see these either by clicking our “budget” category – http://newhartfordplus.com/category/budget-2/ or by checking out our YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/newhartfordplus .

This input opportunity is not the same as that provided for by State statute. Section 7-344 states that:

“The board shall submit such estimate with its recommendations to the annual town meeting next ensuing, and such meeting shall take action upon such estimate and recommendations, and make such specific appropriations as appear advisable, but no appropriation shall be made exceeding in amount that for the same purpose recommended by the board and no appropriation shall be made for any purpose not recommended by the board”

This provides the real opportunity for voter input, through actual action upon specific budget items, and is not the same as a simple opportunity for public comment.

Our question is twofold. Can a local ordinance reduce a citizens rights as provided by State statute and can the Board of Selectmen change the content of the legal notice of the Budget Meeting without publishing and making known the new notice as required by law?

This case is even more troublesome, because the change to the Meeting Notice occurred at a special Selectmen’s meeting that occurred prior to the issuance of the notice. This had become standard practice in New Hartford and our requests to the BOFand BOS to review this practice have been ignored.

Bob