Taking Past Excess Off the Table
Some elected officials, in Tiverton, are encouraging their fellows to ignore the past while constructing the next budget. My Tiverton-Little Compton.Patch column, this week, I suggest that such an approach is, well, improper:
It certainly shouldn’t be a foregone conclusion that a tax base that grew by 2% over a period of 28% inflation can afford a 78% increase in the cost of local government services. All else being equal, the community for which $17.5 million was the affordable levy in 2001-2002 should only have been asked for $22.9 million in 2009-2010 [instead of $31.1 million].
Obviously, a panoply of other considerations come into play, but it’s awfully convenient of Cotta to insist that Tiverton’s leaders should weigh the upcoming budget in isolation from the past. Moreover, it brings to the fore the error in government budgeting processes.
Let me tell you something about the town concil.They do most of there meetings behind cloesed doors most things being inporting to the peaple here without the peaples vote funny how that is.They elected a building inspector i would not let build me a dog house and was thrown out his town employment,and from what i here almost out of his town littlecompton all togeather.Nobody had a say on that,makes you wonder.We got a chief who likes to play grabass with his female officers that was none publicly ,no secret.An taxes well do the math i dont have 100000000 pages to talk abuot that.Its a real joke.