LETTER: JOANNE ARRUDA

May 15, 2011

At Saturday’s Financial Town Meeting the TCC/Tea Party were there as the usual obstructionists. What I witnessed was the President of the TCC as well as their most active members giving their usual orders to their followers to get up and regurgitate what they want said, so that when the leadership of the TCC/Tea Party get up to speak they look like they are reasonable and cooperative people who agree with everything the Schools and the Budget Committee recommended, and that is the furthest thing from their minds. What’s sad is that those who get up to speak to the so called “issues” do it for keeping in the “good graces” of the upper echelon of the TCC.

This year’s budget was fair and reasonable. The Budget Committee reviewed each and every aspect of the budget without making any deep cuts, why, because every department as well as the School Committee did their jobs by keeping the budget well below the cap. At no time was any budget area over the cap, in spite of what the members of the TCC/Tea Party may have or will continue to spew.

This Town Council with the exception of three members has nothing but their own personal agendas at the forefront. They care only what it means to their own bottom lines as it relates to their tax bills. Why, because some live in multi-million dollar homes, not like the most of us, who stand to gain more because if their tax bills are in the tens of thousands of dollars the savings they realize are far larger than the most of ours.

So now this year the members of the Council who are TCC/Tea Party will now take credit for the lowest tax rate increase in 10 years. Please know that most of this TCC/Tea Party leadership didn’t even live here 5 years ago. Those who were elected to this Town Council won their seats by promising “No Tax increases” yet this year they are patting themselves on the back for a 2 percent tax Increase! What a farce.

The TCC president publically states the TCC now supports the Budget Committee’s recommendations, well that didn’t seem so on at least one occasion when, they, the leadership of the TCC were at a Budget Committee meeting and all but suggested to sue the Budget Committee for a position that was taken by the Committee as it related to a vote on the School Department’s bottom-line budget. When the Budget Committee stood its ground to their slanted questions, the TCC leadership stormed out of the meeting before the end.

A word of caution, the majority of this Town Council’s next attempt will be to strip away our voices by implementing an all-day referendum in place of the Financial Town Meeting come November. Don’t be hood-winked into thinking that mechanism of approving and appropriating the Town’s budget will be good for the Town. This question has come up in the past, and the Town’s people answered by a resounding “NO” vote. No one says that the Financial Town Meeting or Democracy for that matter is perfect, but it works.

The handful of the most active TCC/Tea Party members have done nothing constructive in this Town except turn the Town upside down, pit one neighbor against the other and that is a shame.

Joanne Arruda
Tiverton, RI