Some Budgets Are More Equal Than Others

For those who take comfort in consistency, the fact that Bethel’s 2015 Budget Public Hearing on Monday, March 23, and annual Town Meeting on Monday, April 6, will take place a full month earlier than in past years, may prove unsettling. Prior to recent charter revisions, Bethel voters gathered to discuss the thorny issues of town and school spending in the first week of May.

But there’s a bright spot for people who respond to change with anxiety and worry.

A new tradition pertaining to the approval process of proposed budgets has taken root over the past six years, and it’s one that appears to be here to stay. A radical departure from days gone by, it is a practice that relieves the Board of Selectmen of its responsibility and places the burden of evaluating the Board of Education‘s proposed budget relative to other town needs completely on the Board of Finance.

Since Matt Knickerbocker‘s election in 2009, he and Selectmen Richard Straiton and Paul Szatkowski have passed the Board of Education’s proposed budget along to the Board of Finance, sans comment, and without recommending as much as one penny in cuts.

For the past six years, proposed education budgets totaling close to $250 million (a quarter of a billion dollars -- 85 percent of that in salaries and benefits) have been rubber-stamped by Bethel’s elected officials during one of the worst economic downturns since the stock market crash of 1929.

According to Board of Selectmen meeting minutes dated March 1, 2012, the “selectmen remarked that they believe the voters should have their say on the Board of Education budget; the Board of Education is elected by the voters; and they (the Board of Education) have formulated a budget they believe best meets the educational needs of the town of Bethel.”

On that premise, shouldn’t all budget proposals prepared by elected boards and officials be exempt from the selectmen’s scalpel? However, this is not the case.

For example, the Police Commission is an elected Board. Yet, over the past six years the same selectmen who issued the above statement in their own meeting minutes recommended cuts -- some of them dramatic -- to that budget. Is the Police Commission not capable of determining what best meets the law enforcement needs of the town of Bethel?

Why have our paid elected officials chosen to abjure their role and punt the proposed school budgets for six consecutive budget seasons? Why should the volunteer members of the Board of Finance bear the sole burden of reducing unjustified spending? For the selectmen to simply pass along the proposed BoE budget without comment is nothing short of a tacit approval of 60 percent of Bethel’s total municipal budget.

That Bethel has the highest effective tax rates of any town in the area except Newtown is a direct result of our town’s unrestrained spending, which is a by-product of the selectmen’s one-sided behavior.

These exorbitant tax rates are particularly oppressive considering that Bethel’s wealth ranking (ability to pay) is 100th out of 169 neighboring towns. The area towns with the higher wealth rankings have lower equalized mill rates than Bethel, while the town with the lower wealth ranking endures a higher tax burden. (Refer to June 29, 2014, News-Times article “Where the Money Goes.”)

The Board of Selectmen’s inability and/or unwillingness to recommend unpopular budget cuts exacerbates the ongoing issue of overtaxation.

Soaring property taxes have become more than just a burden to Bethel taxpayers -- they discourage new business formation and make it more and more difficult for current residents and business owners to remain in the town they love.

The Land of Steady Habits has an inspiring state motto, qui transtulit sustinet, which means “He who transplanted it, sustains it.” This phrase should be modified for Bethel taxpayers to read -- “qui transtulit non amplius sustinet,” “He who transplanted it can no longer afford to sustain it.”

Budget recommendations are meant to be a shared responsibility, not something to be quickly passed along to the next examiner.

Bethel’s selectmen need to step up and make the hard choices on both budgets, at their own table, and on the first pass.

Published Op Ed/NewsTimes/2015-03-17

Cynthia J. McCorkindale is Chairman of the Bethel Action Committee and a resident of Bethel.