It is unfortunate but the charter allows it. With 50 or more signatures, Justin Katz can submit a budget which puts aside the hard work of your elected officials: the School Committee, the Budget Committee and the Town Council have worked for months to establish a budget which is fair to taxpayers, preserves the vital services of the town and continues to support the schools. But without a lot of answers to specific questions, without engaging the people who do the work, without really much thought and with no responsibility for the consequences, he has done it again.
What he has demonstrated is a lot of imagination with numbers. However, one place where Mr. Katz's imagination fails him is in telling us where the school department is to come up with the $127,000.00 he cuts from the schools. He did suggest funding programs out of the reserve fund. This would create a structural deficit in the budget and fly in the face of the fiscal prudence for which the school department was universally praised at the recent Financial Town Hearing. You don't pay your mortgage with a credit card. The amount is suspiciously close to the cost of implementing full day kindergarden. No doubt he isn't bold enough to go so far as to make this explicit. This innovation is the most important and cost effective investment we can make in our children's future. But it's too much for Mr. Katz.
While the charter allows an alternative budget, a crucial part of his strategy is voter apathy. A low turnout favors the extremists. Please come to vote at Tiverton High School on May 16th to support the schools, the town and all of your fellow citizens by voting for Budget #1.
Jerry Larkin
Tiverton School Committee
Tiverton School Committee
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