New Ordinance permitting the Municipal and Board of Education budgets to be split and voted on Separately passes

       The towns residents have decided that they want to split the Town and Education budgets and vote on them separately. The vote was 954 yes to 390 no to pass the ordinance. The Finance Board had already recommended that the town not pass the measure but clearly the great majority of citizens had thought differently about this.
        This measure will cause the town to be involved is some very heated battles in the future because this was clearly meant to target the education budget. The Finance Board had felt that if this passed it would cause the various constituencies in town to become polarized. That is what you can expect to happen. There will be multiple referendums to get the budget passed with each group attacking the other.

        Many town residents want the town to remain rural but I am not convinced that can happen. In fact without some type of business or industry developing or moving into town I think that all of the burden of taxes will continue to fall on residential properties in town. This is going to increase the number of failed referendums and prolonged budget fights. The problem is the lack of revenue for the town and being overly reliant on residential properties to generate revenue to run the town. This is the real problem.

       Frankly the towns per-pupil spending is one of the lowest in the state. That, in the end, is the tragedy because that is what can affect the students and it hurts the towns property values. I want to protect my investment and the current system will not work. Future battles over the education budget will lead to many battles over whether this budget is high enough. I honestly don't know how it can get any lower.