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Voters Grow Weary

With the passage of the Clinton education budget on May 24 and the town budget on June 7, the dangerous precedent has been set that neither the town nor schools have any intention of adjusting spending to fairly share the burden of state aid cuts with taxpayers. Those cuts were passed through as a large component of a 10.1 percent increase in Clinton’s mill rate to 29.91.

The budget referendum process has become a weapon to bludgeon taxpayers and voters into submission instead of as a democratic process that gives adequate sway to the consent of the governed.

After the first failed referendum, there was not adequate time allotted between referendums to accommodate absentee voting. People are repeatedly inconvenienced as the Board of Finance peels the budget onion razor thin. No wonder voters grow weary and cynical, while the special interests and public employees grow self-indulgent, aggressive, and indifferent.

Property taxes are the second-most regressive state and local tax paid by Connecticut taxpayers. A 10 percent tax increase for low-income households struggling to feed and clothe their families and for fixed-income seniors juggling the costs of medicine, food, and energy poses a major personal financial crisis. Yet a one percent cut in a 5.8 percent education budget increase was the germ of mass hysteria by the heartless, yet tearful, education lobby.

A 10 percent mill-rate increase lengthens Clinton’s disadvantage to neighboring towns, all with lower mill rates and lower mill-rate increases. That further depresses property values, discourages commercial development, and will become the last straw for small businesses with critically tight margins.

These consequences are now owned by the boards of Education, Selectmen, and Finance, the self-serving special interests and political organizations like the Democratic Town Committee, which paid for many of the “vote Yes” signs seen around Clinton.

Kirk Carr

Clinton

Kirk Carr serves on the Board of Finance.