Seymour voters rejected the town’s proposed school budget, and approved its town budget at a day-long referendum Tuesday.
The results:
Board of Education
Yes: 904
No: 989
Town Budget
Yes: 975
No: 914
First Selectman Paul Roy said the Board of Education and the Board of Finance will get together to talk about how they can change the proposal in order to secure an approval from voters.
“It’s a fine line,” Roy said. “We’ve got to figure out what number that is. We’re going to work hard to figure out what that number is.”
The school budget proposal was $29.8 million, an increase of $702,000 over the current year. The town budget proposal was $20.7 million.
Voters rejected the first proposed school and town budgets at a referendum held April 26.
The town’s Board of Finance then trimmed the budget by about $190,000.
I am completely shocked and embarrassed by this vote. The children of this town deserve better than we have provided for 8 years running. Properly funded schools and town services are what will increase property values, attract new business and residents. We can choose to take our town forward and prosper or stay this destructive course and move further down in the rankings. Lastly – the voter turn out again was pretty dismal. Get out and vote – it’s more than a right, it’s a responsibility!!!
People in other countries are rioting and getting killed so they can vote. Here, people don’t care. I wish the folks in town would value the freedom they have to vote and help make decisions about what goes on in their own town. Every vote counts. People can’t say they didn’t know about the vote. Citizens in town have spent hours upon hours going to schools, sporting events and other town wide events to let people know when, where and why they need to vote. Signs were put up EVERYWHERE. Phone calls were made to EVERY town citizen as well as parents. Emails were sent out. *let’s celebrate the freedoms we still have and vote!
Seymour families consistently fail to out-vote the old people. Its really because there are just too many old people in Seymour who (apparently) are greedy and hate children, to be honest.
Ignorant people more DOLLARS does not = Better education , all it does is puts more money in the teachers and administraters pockets , and takes it out of ours .. Wake up
Ignorant?? Wake up??? – Well here you go, you do realize the salaries are contracted, the state and federal mandates are fixed, the cost to run the facilities (heat, electric, etc) are what they are.. and we cannot do anything to alter them at this moment in time. So the money you refuse to put into the BOE budget are dollars you are not giving to improve programs for the children. The only one’s you are hurting here are the children. Don’t like the salaries maybe you should speak up when those contracts are up for renewal. You do also realize that the Superintendent and others have not taken their contracted raises and or opted out of other benefits in the past years, talk about selfless acts. Maybe it’s time the residents of Seymour do what’s right and TAKE CARE OF THE CHILDREN!!!
born here: it is you who are massively ignorant. It is a scientific fact that increasing spending on schools lowers the tax rate, increases property values, and brings more money into a community due to increased commerce as a result. A scientific fact. One you are apparently ignorant of.
It is also a fact that the budget has parts which are variable and parts which are fixed. Guess what? The salaries are in the “fixed” part, and programs for the CHILDREN are in the “variable” part. By voting down the increases, guess which group you are hurting?
Wow, talk about ignorant.