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Question the Wisdom

On a day historic for severe weather in Connecticut, 1,548 Madison taxpayers braved the threat and risk of dangerous tornadoes and bad weather on May 15 to vote on the Madison town and schools budgets. The tally on both budgets was 57 percent in favor, 43 percent opposed.

The storm hit after 5 p.m., when the majority of working adults have the opportunity to get to the voting booths. Many taxpayers could not vote because of the severe weather and area warnings for tornadoes, which ultimately killed six people in Connecticut and caused a massive evacuation at Bradley Airport.

I voted by absentee ballot, as I was out of town. A friend said he braved the intense storm to go vote at Brown School, only to find the building looked closed. The building was completely dark—not a light to be seen. He and another man banged on the school windows to see if voting officials were present and were ultimately let into the dark building. According to Superintendent of School Tom Scarice, the Brown and Reyerson schools were still closed without power on the following day.

With such irregularities on voting day, it would have been prudent to reschedule or continue the vote on the important decision of the budget for an alternate day to allow all taxpayers to vote without risking their lives. Had the vote gone a different way, would town officials have done so? Why would rescheduling voting day for severe weather carry less weight than something seemingly less important than a parade or a ball game?

One has to question the wisdom and the accuracy of this vote under such substandard conditions.

Without question, the dangerous storm grossly affected the voter turnout. Did the power outage at Brown affect the actual tally of the final numbers? We may never know.

Terry VandenDolder

Madison