Granby Residents Call for Automatic Budget Referendum

Has the Annual Town Meeting outlived its purpose in Granby?

It’s a question that a group of Granby residents has raised by circulating a petition seeking to change the town charter to automatically send the operating budget to a town-wide referendum instead of having the measure decided at a Town Meeting.

Granby’s town charter currently allows for the operating budget to be passed if a quorum of at least 230 voters attend the Annual Town Meeting, which was most recently held in April, and a supermajority — at least two-thirds — of those in attendance approves it.

The vote at the Town Meeting takes place only after both operating boards — the selectmen and education — have presented their budgets and members of the public have had the opportunity to comment and/or ask questions.

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The entire process, which has its roots that date all the way back to the 17th century and is a distinctly New England form of local governance, can take several hours, with the votes sometimes being cast well after 9 p.m. on a weeknight.

Among the arguments made against the Town Meeting is that it allows for a small minority of the electorate to pass a budget that has now grown well into the tens of millions of dollars. Indeed, this year, just 299 residents voted at the town meeting, with 213 (or 71 percent) voting in favor of the $40 million 2012-13 operating budget and 86 (or 29 percent) voting against.

There are about 7,700 registered voters in Granby.

In addition, opponents of the Town Meeting also said that it disenfranchises large segments of the population, including seniors, public safety officers, parents with small children and people who work second shift, who cannot attend a meeting vote so late.

“There is no longer a valid reason to continue the process of holding people hostage for hours in the town re-education camp prior to allowing them to exercise their right to vote,” Terry Wright told the Charter Commission Revision Commission at its meeting at the Granby Senior Center and Youth Services building Wednesday evening. “The process, as it is currently configured, is nothing more than a mechanism to suppress the vote. If the commission members truly believe in voter inclusion and increased participation, I strongly urge you to replace this process with an automatic referendum vote.”

Referendum petition gathered

As such, a group of other residents including Jim Glenney, Robert Flanagan, Leonard Murray and Jerry Ledger, gathered signatures — some 933 as of Wednesday evening — on a petition that calls for an automatic referendum in lieu of a vote at the Town Meeting.

“This is an idea that has caught on like wildfire,” Flanagan told the members of the Charter Revision Commission. “People in town want this. They want the extra opportunity to vote.”

“We’ve got to get more people involved,” added Wal Czewski.

Flanagan noted that nearly every other town in the Farmington Valley — including Simsbury, Avon and Farmington — has gone to some form of referendum vote to settle the budget. In East Granby, the Board of Selectmen have the final say as to whether to send the budget to a referendum or to have the question presented at the Town Meeting.

“The referendum is a question of right and wrong,” said Glenney, who said that he voted against the budget at the Town Meeting because of what he perceived to be an anachronistic process rather than any problem he had with the spending measure. “The referendum is right. The Town Meeting is wrong.”

An informed vote

The issue, however, isn’t so cut and dry, according to at least one charter revision commissioner, who said that the current form of voting on the budget remains necessary for residents to provide an informed vote.

“It makes sure that people understand the issues,” said Charter Revision Commission Vice Chairman Lowell “Whitey” Johnson said. “You vote on what’s said at the meeting, not what your neighbor says. You have to base [it] on an educated vote.”

Johnson said that he recalled a situation back when Granby had a referendum years ago a mailing that went out to residents that contained falsehoods on the budget. There was not adequate time to respond to the mailing, Johnson said, resulting in people making misinformed votes on the measure.

Johnson said that requiring a supermajority to pass the budget at the Town Meeting serves as adequate protection against a statistical anomaly of having a budget approved that otherwise wouldn’t pass.

“You’ve got to have two votes for every one in order for the budget to pass,” Johnson said. “That automatically gets you to a referendum by virtue of needing two yeses for every no vote.”

But Commissioner Jim Lofink disagreed, stating that it was possible for a group of well-organized people who were either for or against the budget to sway the outcome one way or another.

Wright also disagreed with Johnson’s claim that the Town Meeting was the best or only way to make an informed decision on the budget.

“In this modern age of personal electronics, we have numerous ways to educate ourselves to the budget process if we choose to,” said Wright, noting that meetings are aired on GCTV and are available on-demand on the Internet.

As it stands, the commission did not make a determination as to what it would recommend to the Board of Selectmen on the issue. Commissioners Melissa Migliaccio and Lofink were tasked with researching what process towns with 10,000 to 15,000 residents used to pass their budgets.

Murray, for his part, said that the group would continue to accumulate signatures before submitting the petition to the town clerk to be certified and passed along to the Board of Selectmen.

Calling for other changes

The referendum was only one change that the commission was called on to make.

In addition, Wright said that he would like to have the referendum held on a weekend instead of a weekday to encourage more participation.

“There should be a way that all voters can have a way to exercise their right to vote,” Wright said.

Wright also called on the commission to bifurcate the vote into two questions: one for the municipal budget and one for the education budget.

Ledger also called on the commission to consider adding a section in the charter on ethics for elected officials.

Commission’s timetable

The Charter Revision Commission is nearing the end of its work. Indeed, the commission scheduled two more meetings — one for May 16 at 6 p.m., the other for May 19 - before it files its draft report with the town clerk on May 22. A public hearing will then be held on June 1.