"hold a vote on the tax increase (or decrease) before the budget is even formulated."

You mean, figure out in advance, "what can we afford?". Well, that would be the prudent and responsible thing to do.

That we have not done so until now has made us the fourth highest taxed state in the country and created quite an entitlement mentality in several expenditure categories.

"the town's obligation to keep its services going"

Red herring. The issue is not whether services should continue. The question is, at what cost should those services be delivered? And how much larger will our elected officials permit the gulf between cost and value received to grow?

Build a budget / cost structure based on "what can we afford?".

BINGO! That's exactly right and that is exactly how we must conduct our personal lives ...unless you are one of the misguided fools that end up losing their homes to foreclosure due to buying what they can't afford.

Unfortunately, RI suffers from an an infestation of Entitlement-minded Union hacks like Providence FD Union Pwesident, Lazy-Ass Pauly "No Show" Doughty, who truly believes they should be paid based on what other "big Northeastern Cities" pay, as opposed to what the Taxpayer's of Providence can ACTUALLY afford.

And when they are told "no", they jump up and down like babies and whine to us about how they "give selflessly" and that we need to "Do it For the Children".

I am not interested enough (or tech- minded enough) to blog from a public meeting (listening takes all my concentration), but I can stay up late afterward slaving over a hot keyboard writing to the press...

here's a peek:

This Monday evening, the Tiverton Town Council held its final public hearing on the Charter amendments. As usual, the Council did an admirable job of fielding ideas, asking good questions, and making some reasonable changes. In the case of the last amendment they accepted, they made a mistake. They passed, by a 4 to 2 vote, an amendment to the Charter put forward by Jeff Caron. This is what I call the “Sour Grapes” amendment. It stems entirely from the last round of Financial Town Meetings. The “sour grapes” are those of our beleaguered wealthy in town, who object to being taxed to run a public school system.
The amendment attempts to prohibit the use of town equipment or other resources “to influence the result of an election”. It sounds like a no-brainer. It will probably pass overwhelmingly in November. Ms. Durfee and Mr. Medeiros wisely opposed this amendment. It is too broad in its language. It raises serious constitutional issues. It will be challenged now, by one side or another, in court. More legal bills for Tiverton. For this reason alone I was surprised that four Councilors voted to send it to the November ballot. Ms. Durfee warned all concerned about the possibility of a court challenge on civil liberties grounds. Sadly, no one seemed to care that she had solicited advice from an ACLU attorney. [No smart-aleck comments, JK]
The amendment purports to “save the voters” from misuse of taxpayers money by town officials (here read: the School Board) in using town property (phones, email and leaflets) to tell parents about a forthcoming meeting. This “misuse”, which is actually lawful and allowed, is one reason 850 people came to the FTM on May 28th, and only 450 came on May 21st. Hence, grapes that are sour.
Not surprisingly, the “usual suspects” (as I call them) stood up tonight to demand we stop this kind of “misuse”: Jeff Caron, Cynthia Nebergall, Roger Bennis, Justin Katz, someone else, from of course Nanaquaket Road, who proposed collecting from the schools all the parent’s email addresses so the override opponents could send them messages, too. I’m afraid I fell all over myself yelling at him- not very mature on my part, but it felt good! It was quite a show from our elite Republican conservatives who are trying to attack the public schools in any way they can.
In fact, the language of the amendment is so broad it would prevent the schools from sending a simple message reminding parents that a meeting was coming up. (See, just reminding them has the result in voting that conservatives dread.) That is its fatal flaw. Our voters will pass this amendment, next spring the schools will send out an announcement- carefully worded not to advocate any certain vote. Someone will challenge this action, we will go to court, and the Caron-Nebergall group will lose.
I was disappointed that Don Bollin, a man I admire greatly, and look forward to re-electing, seemed caught up in this frenzy. He objects to town property being used in this way because it “targets” a small group- parents and guardians of public school children. In Bollin’s universe, things would only be OK if the School Board mailed notices to every resident, not just parents. The schools have their audience: children and parents. A requirement to advertise a meeting beyond this group would never fly in a court.
No one has mentioned the core of this issue: it is a fight on all sides to control the Financial Town Meeting, which, out of 11,500 voters manages each year to draw fewer participants. 350, 450, 825. The latter is the number which came on May 28th after parents of school children were reminded of the meeting. The wealthy Republicans in this town would not care about the schools using reminders to get folks to the meetings if they could control every meeting. I believe Ms. Nebergall and Mr. Caron, if so worried about parents voting, should set up their own network of alerts. Perhaps they could put a flier in every delivered copy of the Wall Street Journal in Tiverton?
Now people on both sides have a new amendment, which will pass, to fight about in court. With our tax dollars.
The people pushing the amendment refused to write it in a sensible, narrower way. The Town Council did make an amendment which is some minor improvement, but still means a court challenge may happen. I was disappointed that 4 Democrats (OK, nonpartisans) on the Council voted to send the amendment on to a vote in November.
At its root, this is an attempt by conservatives and Republicans in town to suppress the vote of parents with public school children by trying to block the schools from reminding them of an upcoming public meeting. The amendment will not and should not work. It is a free speech issue. After it fails, more sour grapes?

"The “sour grapes” are those of our beleaguered wealthy in town, who object to being taxed to run a public school system."

You must be new to the discussion of Rhode Island's education system, Richard.

You'll find that most people who object to the current status of our education system are not wealthy not do we object to funding a good education for our children. ("Our" in the community sense.)

You would also find, if you did a modicum of research, that Rhode Island's education system is upside down: teacher compensation is in the top fifth of the country while student performance is in the bottom fifth. If you choose to respond to my comment, please specifically address this point because it is the crux of the matter.

That is what we object to. We object to our elected officials putting our children a distant second to ... something else. What is that else? Ask your elected officials who have for decades agreed to raises (double raises in many cases) and acceded to contracts without regard to student performance and who, remarkably, use the industrial age relict of "last hired first fired" when a teaching force must be reduced.

After reading the post by Richard I have to address the clumping of Democrats on one side & Republicans on the other. I have always voted Democrat. I probably always will in national elections. As far as Tiverton is concerned, this is not a (D) (R) issue, or a rich/ middle class issue. This is a survival issue. The tax increase here bothers democrats too. How can it not. It's ridiculous! My children go to school here, & my family, along with pretty much everyone I know who attended voted against the tax increase. Yes, some of parents did not want to vote in a public forum to face their children's teachers the next day in school. Nor do they feel comfortable having the police force & firemen watching them vote. Come on, this is not right. It's like crossing some union picket line. Voting on something of this magnitude, should be done in private, with the whole town being solicited to get out & vote. I actually don't know one person I talked to who is happy with this outrageous increase. Again, most of the town did not show & did not know it was even happening. Anyone who has the ability to think would know most of the people do not want this financial burden at such a hard time for most Americans. I actually think the only people who did want the increase showed up to the meeting. Which should shift your perception about the school parents. We all got the calls, but the vast majority didn't go to the meeting to "support the school system." I support the school with my taxes each year. Along with my multitude of fundraisers & my volunteer work. I don't think taking such a large amount of property tax is fair. I just don't. Here is where my Democratic mind differs with yours. I think the Federal Government during Bush', reign of hell, has taken too much away from the states for such things as education & elderly programs. This has led some town's such as Tiverton to feel they can recoup all their losses by siphoning their residents. It can't work that way, & hopefully the next real election
in town will stop this madness.

Also if Ms. Nebergall and Mr. Caron, would like to set something up so their could be some sort of mass emailing system to inform residents of the proposed changes set forth by the town counsil, I'm in. I bet I could get a few neighbors, & parents on board too. Somewhere post how to join & I'm in! Thanks for that suggestion Richard, I thought would be a good idea when the school called me last time!

"Well, the review committee held meetings for months, and that was the opportunity for town officials to express their concerns and make suggestions with respect to its proposal."

I would agree Justin except that it was pointed out, by the Charter members themselves, at the June 23rd Council meeting that I attended that the proposal was still being drafted and would not be available until June 30th. In fact, the Council had to schedule a special meeting just to hear it on that date. Even after the June 30th meetings, I noted several other major (in my opinion) changes/additions to the proposal that was published on the Town's website. So it is very difficult to comment earlier on something that simply doesn't exist or is a moving target, or at least I found it so...

Will,

I was mainly making a parallel to the claims that voting for representatives and attending budget meetings are adequate means of citizen participation in the budget process. Both are also "moving targets." In essence, the town council's last-minute response to the mandate to come up with an alternative to the financial town meeting is subject to the same complaints that some are making about the financial town meeting and/or an all-day referendum.