The longest budget season in recent memory has come to an end, as Morristown voters approved of funding the current fiscal year, which is already two months old.
Voters Tuesday passed a $9.2 million operating budget, after two failed votes, nearly a million dollars in cuts and half a year of often rancorous debate between — and among — town officials and a vocal segment of the populace opposed to the spending measures.
The vote was not a landslide, with a tally of 915-699 in favor of the budget, but it gets the job done. Now, the healing begins, according to selectboard vice chair Don McDowell.
“The healing process is tremendously important, and I think it's going to take a while. It’s not going to happen overnight,” McDowell said Tuesday night within minutes of the polls closing and the votes being tallied up. “We’ve been at this since the middle of January and we’ve had three very tough votes, and it’s created a community that has witnessed a lot of division. But we do have a budget now. This was a pretty decisive vote for us. I feel good about that.”
Board chair Judy Bickford, traveling abroad this week, wrote in an email Wednesday morning, “I am delighted with the results that the budget passed and now the Selectboard can focus on the business of the community.”
However, any celebrations will be short-lived. Because it took nearly half a year to pass a budget, the town’s number crunchers won’t get much of a breather before they have to sit down and start the planning all over again for the next fiscal year’s operation costs.
Laura Streets, the lone member of the selectboard who voted against adopting the budget and who also voted against it at the polls, said Morristown’s operating expenses are still up more than 14 percent over last year and more than 26 percent in two years.
“The work has only begun,” Streets emailed Wednesday morning. “I hope we can move forward civilly without all the propaganda and threats and develop an affordable and sustainable budget based on facts.”
When asked what she meant about propaganda and threats, she stopped short of naming names, but said the town hasn’t fully listened to the people.
“I am in full support of the folks who attend the meetings. I firmly believe their anger is from frustration that no one is listening to them, being called names, and constant arrogant, condescending replies to their comments, fear of not being able to afford to live here, and the anger of facing working well until their 70’s to pay taxes and save their home,” Streets wrote.
When the board begins budget deliberations, it can count on at least some of the town’s most vocal budget critics showing up. That includes Tom Cloutier, one of a small number of people who have been opposing the budget increases since last December.
“There are 699 people who were not in favor of the vote,” Cloutier said. “By golly, when they go to work on the next budget, you can bet there will be 699 people watching.”
McDowell said he knows the town will no longer be budgeting in a vacuum, when meetings go late into the night in December and January with scant attendance.
“I think now we’re going have a more engaged public, more engaged representation of the residents in town,” he said. “That’s a good thing, obviously. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
New faces
In selectboard elections, Richard Craig beat Paul Griswold 911-502 for the remainder of a two-year term vacated abruptly in June by Travis Sabataso.
And incumbent board member Chris Palermo handily won re-election to the remainder of a three-year term that ends in March. He was appointed to the seat in April, also replacing a board member who suddenly resigned, longtime chair Bob Beeman.
Palermo was uncontested on the ballot, but he did see some competition from Yvette Mason, a former board member and current justice of the peace, who attempted a write-in campaign. A total of 334 people submitted write-in votes, but it’s not clear how many of them were for Mason. Palermo netted 1,049 of the total votes for his contest.
According to town clerk Sara Haskins, a total of 1,624 Morristown residents cast votes, about 38 percent of the total voter checklist for the town. That’s 38 more votes cast than on June 6, when the budget failed for a second time, and 208 fewer than on Town Meeting Day.
Residents overwhelmingly agreed to add a third new face to town government, but it is far from clear who that me be.
On a vote of 1,110-438, voters approved switching to a town manager form of government, instead of a town administrator style. It’s a stark indicator of how different the town is from just two years ago, when the selectboard rejected moving to a town manager model because doing so would erode the board’s power.
The key difference between a manager and an administrator is how much authority a community is willing to cede to a professional and how much of a say elected selectboard members get over day-to-day town operations — town managers have more; administrators have less.
The mandate was driven by a petition that Cloutier, among others, spearheaded. He points to that, and an earlier-petition-led vote to switch all town votes to Australian ballot rather than from the floor, as victories for the community at large, even if his side didn’t get its way on the budget.
“Morrisville will be a lot stronger for all of these terrible things that have gone on this year,” Cloutier said.
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