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Must Adjust to Reality

Next Wednesday, April 12, Clinton’s Board of Finance will hold a public hearing about the proposed 2017-’18 budget at 7 p.m. in the Town Hall Auditorium. Other than the referendum on Wednesday, May 10, this will be your readers’ only opportunity to speak their minds.

Last year, with a 2.2 percent increase in spending and taxes, both budgets passed on the first vote for the first time since 2009 by very narrow margins of just 14 votes for the town and 36 votes for education. This year the proposed combined budget increase is 4.4 percent and, because of state reductions in Education Cost Sharing and municipal grants, taxes are projected to increase 11.8 percent or more than 3 mills.

Your readers will be told that most of the spending increase is due to increased health insurance premiums from the Eastern Connecticut Health and Medical Cooperative, yet Old Saybrook Public Schools, a member of the same cooperative, is reducing its health insurance budget.

We are also told that if we weren’t part of the cooperative, these rates would be going up even more. Yet Madison Public Schools is budgeting a health insurance increase of just 7.2 percent compared to 16 percent for Clinton Public Schools. Employee benefits have been chronic sources of over-budgeted expenses and large surpluses by the Board of Education.

Property taxes are the second-most regressive tax in Connecticut. A double-digit increase in Clinton property taxes is inhumane. Clinton’s public employees, Public Works contractors, and health insurance carrier must adjust to reality. Clinton is neither growing nor prospering. The poverty rate has surged from 2.6 percent in 2010 to 8.6 percent in 2015.

Don’t be fooled that these increases will help the kids or that cutting these increases must hurt the kids. I encourage your readers to speak up on April 12 and vote on May 10.

Kirk Carr

Clinton