Representative Town Meeting Begins Hard Look At The Budget

Representative Town Meeting began the lengthy task of reviewing and cutting the town budget Thursday night, after hearing from residents who asked for support for the Mystic & Noank Library or for education, while others said they want no tax increase.

The Town Council on Tuesday approved a tentative tax rate of 19.6 mills for the coming fiscal year, an increase of 6.4 percent over the current year. Councilors cut $1.7 million from the budget recommended by the Town Manager, which would have required a mill rate increase of 9.8 percent.

“I hope that you’ll ask yourself one overriding question,” said resident Natalie Billing. “And that is, do you believe that this budget would pass if it were going to a budget referendum? I don’t.”

She suggested several steps to cut spending further: eliminate wage increases, consider an across the board cut of 1 percent, and pass the lower of two budgets proposed by the board of education, which would close one middle school.

Billing said programs like all-day kindergarten and preschool should not be expanded.

“We complain about unfunded mandates,” she said.  “This is an unfunded non-mandate. I disagree with the town imposing a mandate like this on itself.”

Others argued for more support for agencies like the library.

Jane Brannegan said Mystic & Noank Library has become a place where people fill out on-line job applications to look for work and parents rent movies because they cannot afford to go out with their children.  The library needs funding restored, she said.

“The staff, the board, the friends of the library, they can’t work any harder or cough up possibly any more time to fundraise for the library,” she said.

Michael Kane brought his daughter, Lili, 7, to the meeting to watch how government works. He asked the group to support the public schools; children today will have to solve problems tomorrow, and they need education to do it, he said.

“It’s going to be expensive, but the alternative to that is truly unaffordable,” Kane said.

Representative Town Meeting approved three budgets Thursday night: $43,436 for legislative policy, a cut of $1,136 from the town manager’s recommendation; $422,950 for legal services and $293,133 for executive management, both of which remained the same.

The group takes up budgets for public safety, the City of Groton and Groton Long Point police departments and Parks and Recreation on Wednesday, May 4.