To the editor:

I attended the Public Hearing (Monday, July 25) about the Charter Amendments as I wanted to comment on No.1 and No. 2.

Regarding No 1, in which councilor Perry wants 10% of eligible voters to sign a petition to add an alternate budget to the ballet, I strongly disagree.

There are 12,600 voters, so that means 1,260 signatures would be needed.

Putting this in context are the following:

Budget no. 2 (alternate budget) passed with 1,224 votes.

Also, in many of the past Financial Town Meetings, the number of votes passing budgets were substantially less than 1,200.

Based upon this proposal, the number of people needed to sign a petition for an alternate budget will be equal to or far exceed the number of voters that have passed a budget in the past or can do in the future.

Ballot question 2 wants to limit the amount that an alternate budget can change from the budget committee total to $200,000.

I don’t believe this amount is significant for the following reasons:

At the 2008 FTM, I believe a precedent was set by the budget chairman and backed up by the Town Solicitor. When someone wanted to propose an alternate budget, it was ruled that $200,000 was not a significant change.

Also, $200,000 out of a current year budget committee proposal of $49,471,000 is .4%,

which is not significant.

Here is how I see it. Councilor Perry is seeking retribution for the most recent alternate budget approval, by trying to make it as difficult as possible to propose an alternate budget. He is doing this by requiring a significant number of voters to sign a petition and if the required signatures are acquired, then limiting the decrease to an insignificant amount.

Sanford Mantell

Tiverton