Newton voters head to the polls one week from today to consider three Proposition 2 1/2 debt override ballot questions. How will you vote and why?
Thanks to Ted Hess-Mahan for finding this video.
OPEN THREAD: Newton’s overrides?
by Greg Reibman | Mar 5, 2013 | Override | 10 comments
This depicts the situation in Newton in more than one way. The evil man saying “yes, yes, yes” has imprisoned the poor little guy saying “no, no, no” in a cage. Newton taxpayers can still vote no, despite the evil oppressor! :-D
I vote for Pinocchio!
NO. I believe these ORs will hurt Newton more than help. Our spending will escalate quickly and we will be less able to pay for future tax burdens.
Janet – and let’s not even get into the little no,no,no guy, with the growing nose’s, habits of stretching the truth :-)
Why would the imprisoned little guy be stretching the truth over that of the big bad magistrate? Who has more to lose by lying?
Voting no on the three extravagantly expensive overrides will remind Mayor Setti Warren that he has more work to do in order to whip Newton’s fiscal position from flabby to fabulous.
@Josh: What benchmark would you use to decide when Newton’s fiscal position is “fabulous.” And what would you do about Angier, Cabot, Zervas, the Newton Center fire station and our streets and sidewalks before we get there?
Probably no, no, no. Maybe yes on Angier. Yes, Newton needs these overrides. Yes, the Mayor has done a lot to get our fiscal house in order. Yes, I can even afford the extra expense. No because I do not trust the BOA to manage the extra resources wisely. No because the BOA makes decisions such as no naming rights for the schools. Not limited naming rights. Not some type of compromise demonstrating anything even approaching respect for the Newton taxpayers. Just no. No because, in part, the BOA and its zoning procedures leaves places like Chestnet Square fallow for years on end depriving the city of some much needed taxes. No respect for those of us paying the bills. Also, no because the BOA insists on burdening the citizens of Newton with a plethora of useless, symbolic ordinances from plastic bags and styrofoam cups to (eventually) leaf blowers. Sure none of these is a major burden but each makes it just a little more difficult and/or a little more expensive to live in Newton. When the BOA gets its act together to the same extent that the Mayor has, then I’ll happily vote for some overrides.
@Eric
Thanks for the reminder that 16 of 24 sitting Aldermen in the City Hall chambers were there when Mayor Cohen (AKA ‘the Fall Guy’) was proposing budgets. In fact, I remember one incident while Cohen was still Mayor where 4 Aldermen (of these Schnipper and Coletti are gone, but Hess-Mahan and Albright remain) used the City’s processes to hold up any possible resistance to the proposed 2010 budget. I also question the quality of productive management with so many lifelong department heads and commissioners along with personnel hanging on to positions for 25+ years! The incompetence in some arenas is frightening!
Ironically, the same core group of Newtonians who are endorsing the 2013 overrides are the same tax and spend residents of Newton who were also behind Cohen’s 2008 tax override proposal (regardless of his failure to manage our tax dollars responsibly). The difference being that Setti is such a great salesman he has succeeded in bringing former outspoken opponents into the fold.
At the end of the day, I hope Newton residents come out and have a say in their taxes going up, next Tuesday. If voter turnout is low, it will be a failure of both the pro and con override teams to make people feel their opinion and vote is important when it comes to their tax dollars!
Janet,
Unfortunately, I expect that all of the overrides will pass. We on the blogs pay a lot of attention to this stuff. The average voter doesn’t and will fall for the malarkey from City Hall. There’s so much wrong in how our tax dollars are being used, principally in the form of compensation, salary, pension, etc., to city employees, 80% of the budget. Setti doesn’t want to address this. It’s easier to just take more money from taxpayers and keep the employees stuffed with it.
The retiring Cambridge city manager received $336,000 in 2010 and will retire now with a pension of about $250,000 a year for the rest of his life, for doing nothing. This is what is going on everywhere in civil service. It’s taken years but it’s completely out of line. We need a taxpayers’ revolt. Passing overrides is sustaining a corrupt system. As I’ve said, it’s extortionate to use threats of kids being affected in order to sustain the system.