Sharpen Those Pencils

It is almost that time again when town departments will be sharing their budget proposals with our boards of Selectmen and Finance. And if history repeats, the Madison property owners will be hit with another tax increase. Why? Because that is the simple solution. But why should we settle for this?

This year, I wish that the property owners of Madison would join together and just say "No"-and to make it known in advance to our officials that we are asking them to spend what they can afford-and that is defined as no more than the current budget.

In this economy it is not unreasonable to ask each department (town and education) for cuts and to find efficiencies and, if one department truly needs more funding, it must come from another. Here is my suggestion: Let's see what the proposals will look like if the boards ask each department to come to them with their best proposal for a five percent cut versus this year's budget and let that be the starting point of the budget discussion process. We all need to make tough choices, and unless we ask for budget cuts, we will never get them. And, we should be telling our officials that they need to get serious about looking to neighboring towns for opportunities to regionalize some town services. After all, we do pay the bills, and we do elect our officials.

We all may all be pleasantly surprised about how creative and efficient people can be when forced to sharpen their pencils. Let's let our officials know in advance this time that any budget increase in total (town and education) will get a "No" vote.

Janet Nicolini
Madison