Lebanon Budget is approved along with Amston Lake Sewer Project

The Lebanon Budget was passed last night by 200 votes and the Sewer Referendum won by over 700 votes. Most of residents were happy that the both projects did pass because the alternative was gridlock and a long fight.
In the case of the Town Budget it is clear that this prevented layoffs of over 14 teachers throughout the school system. The question now is how many teachers are going to be eliminated? The $300,000 that was added by the Board of Finance will cover only the increase in the Health Care Insurance costs for the school system. The salary increase for the teachers, that the labor contract required, of 4.75% will not be supported by this budget.The question for the teachers union is do you want the raise or do you want to save people's jobs?
The Amston Lake Sewer project passed easily. Most residents clearly saw that if it was not approved then we were facing a long drawn out legal fight with the State. It will be interesting to see whether the residents of Amston Lake push for Zoning changes that allow for the seasonal residences to convert to year round use. Will they pursue a lawsuit or will they be satisfied with just a political solution? That remains to be seen. To say the least everyone breathed a sigh of relief when it did pass.

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.