BUDGET COMMITTEE: DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN

The Sakonnet Times headline last week read, "Budget Committee Head Sees 11.83% Tax Hike". As Yogi Berra once said, it was "deja vu all over again”. A year ago, Budget Committee Chair Jeff Caron proclaimed, "If cuts are not made, the budgets for the next fiscal year would result in a 12% increase in the tax levy." Yet the actual proposed tax-levy increase last year was just 3.36%. Someone totally off-base is often called "100% wrong". Mr. Caron was about 200% wrong. So why repeat the same claim?
Budget Committee Chair Jeff Caron is also a founding member of Tiverton Citizens for Change. TCC is a political-action committee with an extreme agenda and one concern: lowering their taxes at all costs, regardless of consequences to the community. There are two possible explanations for last year’s epic miscalculation: manipulating numbers to achieve a political goal, or incompetence. Either way, it makes this year’s projection hard to take seriously.
Some on the Budget Committee are using their positions to push the TCC agenda. Consider last year's Budget Committee travesty, when a rational majority of the BC voted to reject recommending radical cuts. A larger majority then voted to approve the trim 1.5% school-budget increase. TCC voiced its support for the recommended budget. But at the FTM, TCC launched a plan to cut $625,000 from the school budget, with several Budget Committee members who had voted for the school request weeks earlier now inexplicably voting against it. This cut passed by 5 votes, with the votes of just 3% of Tiverton voters. While the plan succeeded, it also destroyed the Budget Committee's credibility and has helped make it irrelevant. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.
Some Budget Committee members continue to overstep their limited responsibilities under the Town Charter. Their two main duties: review budgets submitted by the Town Council and School Committee and make recommendations to FTM voters, and prepare the FTM docket. Mr. Caron says, "The Budget Committee could make the cuts itself". Wrong. The FTM voters alone decide the budget and tax-levy. The Charter also gives exclusive authority to set policy, negotiate contracts, and create budgets to the Town Council & School Committee. The Budget Committee is simply an advisory body, and when it becomes tainted by a political agenda, voters have the option to ignore its recommendations.
With elected office comes a responsibility to put the needs of the whole community above personal agendas. To his credit, Mr. Caron states his true agenda: "I think there can be serious savings in the school budget if the high school were phased out, perhaps through regionalization." The goal is dismantling our school system and community services to lower taxes. Whatever they claim now, TCC will surely attempt to repeat last year’s surprise FTM cuts. Citizens looking to preserve community & school services need only attend the FTM and vote to approve the responsible budget requests of the Town Council & School Committee. Visit curbtiverton.blogspot.com for more info.

Brian Medeiros
127 Grinnell Avenue