Questioning authority and getting no response, a ‘referendum is the only way’ – New Canaan Advertiser

Benjamin Franklin, one of the six signed endorsers of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, scribed these words: The first responsibility of citizenship is to question authority.

He never lived in the Town of New Canaan where a budget referendum might have resulted in a public thrashing on the village green.

In 2013, after a career at CBS Television Network sales of over three decades, I began to research the dramatic rise in the assessment of property taxes since moving to New Canaan nearly a quarter century ago. Through the vigorous application of the use of the Freedom of Information Act, a group of public advocates began to amass a database for analysis which set forth the course of action for the intent to have a referendum vote to reject the 2017-2018 budget approved on April 5.

It took nearly five years of persistent research and data analysis to discover that the NCPS submission of their budgets estimates to estimates was not an acceptable methodology by any generally accepted accounting principle.

The rate of increase in the spending by the NCPS was inflated because the numbers were not compared to full-year actual spending from the prior year until long after the budget for the following fiscal year was approved.

My requests to reform this antiquated budgeting system never received a single emailed response from the Board of Finance or Town Council members during this five year period. Silence is not an answer. Ergo, a referendum is the only way to have accountability for spending administration by the taxpayers as stakeholders in this municipal corporation.

The referendum question proposed on petitions which require 688 signatures from registered voters (5% of the 13,800) seeks to have the Board of Finance to return a budget subject to taxation for the fiscal year 2017-2018 of $131.65 million.

The budget subject to taxation as approved on April 5 for the fiscal year 2017-2018 by the Town Council is $4.8 million higher than the $131.65 million for taxation purposes for fiscal year 2016-2017.

There are four matters of reconsideration in the petition that provides a roadmap to a flat budget:

Any referendum should not be viewed as a personal attack on any public servants competency. Consistent with the Town Charter provisions, vox populi (the voice of the people) do maintain rights to weigh in on property taxes gone wild.

There are less than 20 people who vote upon the budget. More than 7,850 property owners are impacted by their decisions.

A municipality is just that an incorporated entity that may require periodic review by stakeholders as taxpayers.

In the fiscal year 2015-2016 audit, nearly $3.2 million was discovered by the town auditors on the books of the NCPS including unspent funds appropriated and a non-disclosed salary account.

There are also legal rights of electors to seek answer to questions posed to elected BOE in a petition requiring fifty signatures pursuant to C.G.S. 10-238 to seek answers to questions about transparency and best practices within 21 days of the verification of the signatures before the referendum.

Fifty signatures were collected within six days of the budget passage on April 5 and have been verified by the Town Clerk as signatures of electors. Another 650 signatures are needed to move the referendum question into position for a vote by the electors no later than June 12.

A white paper on achieving the funding of needed appropriations by alternative means than taxation can be acquired by emailing me at [emailprotected] or attending public forums to be announced between now and May 8.

Thomas Jefferson wrote as a Founding Father: All that tyranny needs to gain a threshold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.

Only a budget referendum will signal the end tax tyranny in the Next Station to Heaven.

View original post here:

Questioning authority and getting no response, a 'referendum is the only way' - New Canaan Advertiser