Woodstocktruth:

Last night’s Board of Finance meeting was predictable, almost too predictable, in that while it was clear from the June 3rd referendum that the voters are tired of yearly tax increases and are getting fed up with the boards and their “shell game/hide the pea” approach to stuffing the budget, the BOF is going to address reductions in spending incrementally in order to extract as much as possible out of the taxpayers.   Basically the plan is to cut the tax increase in half and remove the $125k they stuffed in during the April 8th meeting to cover the revaluation which had become an obvious ploy to simply stick it to the taxpayers and offended almost everyone.  The strategy, giving it more credit than it’s due, is that after initially foisting on the public a ridiculous 5.4% increase that cutting it in half will legitimize it and perhaps slip it past the voters.  

When it came to how to share the pain, it was clear that town government was going to take the majority of the hit.  First was the $125k for the revaluation that the selectmen had never asked for in the first place, and then with all the bad feelings over the raises that were had over the last two years the only question was “how much?”  

With the budget dollars already split roughly 28% to town government and 72% for education, the impact of any reductions, dollar for dollar, are already more than 2:1 against the town government side but that didn’t matter much.   Suggestions of making the cuts as much as 70% from the town – this is after the $125k – were heard.  The pleas from the pro-BOE crowd were right from the ‘Playbook’.  Pointing out that the BOE in the pre-K through 8 part of the budget has enjoyed a compounded annual growth rate in per student spending of ~8% for the last four to five years and that this is not only unreasonable but unsustainable was ignored.   For the BOE it can never be enough, "it’s for the kids and the future" is the continuing mantra.  Comments to the effect that it’s not “how much” but “how” it’s spent went unheard.   In the end, the board agreed to a fifty - fifty split of the reductions beyond the $125k, meaning on a percentage basis a roughly 5:1 hit for the town side.

In addition to all this, it must be noted that this revised budget is again not anywhere near in compliance with Prop 46, but it is clear that the BOF has no intention of addressing the numerous clerical errors and improper accounting policies that have been used over the last few years to inflate those budgets and that are carrying forward to this one.

Hopefully the voters are going to see through this ploy and turnout to again reject this budget.  Voter turnout will be the key as there are about 550 Breen/BOE faithful who will turnout to spend more money no matter what, and so at least an equal number must come out to keep this under control, for now.

Dave Richardson