Letter: Cuts and consequences; first trash, what’s next?

Posted 7/20/16

To the editor:

As the realities of an almost $1 million cut to the tax levy settles in, I have been reading the letters from the authors of Budget #2 this week. Why is it the "voters have spoken" …

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Letter: Cuts and consequences; first trash, what’s next?

Posted

To the editor:

As the realities of an almost $1 million cut to the tax levy settles in, I have been reading the letters from the authors of Budget #2 this week. Why is it the "voters have spoken" only when it goes their way but when it doesn't (library bond vote, past FTM’s) the results were stolen or manipulated?

The “voters have spoken” and “voter choice” tag lines are flying around like gypsy moths to threaten and villainize those on the Town Council and Budget Committee (BC) who now must deal with the consequences of the Katz budget cuts.

Yes 1,220 voters, or less than 10% of the total voters in town, voted for that $1 million cut. But because Justin Katz only provided voters with a budget total and not with a list of cuts in services that would result, those same voters agreed to remand the budget back to the BC to determine what those cuts would be. That remand was also the voters’ choice. That same BC was elected by almost 40% of total Tiverton voters, as was the elected Town Council. The voters spoke loud and clear in choosing who should represent them and that BC spent two painstaking nights trying to reduce items without impacting community health and safety and without targeting any one group.

Now Katz and company are crying “that is not what the voters wanted.” If that is true, maybe it is because all those glossy cards that were mailed around for Budget #2 comparing Tiverton to surrounding towns and urging voters to “control your taxes” weren’t honest. Did those cards tell anyone what services those surrounding towns don’t have – like trash pickup?

And Budget #2 proponents knew that losing trash was a possibility. Justin Katz stated: “Having spoken with many of them (voters), I can attest that some significant portion, at least, is willing to risk deterioration of the services they do utilize on the chance that they can push back against corrupt waste sucked up by special interests.”

And trash is just the beginning; in a recent letter to the editor, Rob Coulter threatened that “Maybe, too, we’ll decide to take back the new trash fee through additional tax reductions at next year’s FTR.”

Which of your services are these extremists willing to lose next for their ideology? Fire, police, schools? Loss of trash services was a risk they were willing to take, how about you?

Deborah Pallasch

Tiverton

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