From the Newtown Bee, 3/13/2025
To the Editor:
When we started planning for our kitchen renovation years ago, we quickly realized we had to wait until our two daughters were out of college, so that we would be able to afford both the renovation and college. We could have borrowed the money, but we chose not to go into debt. Borrowing is expensive. We wanted to maintain a balanced budget to provide for our family’s future.
I understand from the First Selectman’s proposed budget that he included over a million dollars in revenue from the sale of the police station. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s my understanding that we have not yet sold the old police station, have no idea when it will in fact sell, and for how much. If I had suggested that kind of hopeful speculation on my home budget to my husband, he would have been horrified.
The point of a budget is not to make our bottom line look better; it is to be realistic, transparent, and rigorously accurate. If we had decided to begin our home renovation before our children were out of college, we would have been headed for financial disaster. If we as a community went ahead with a budget based on speculation, not facts, we could have been headed for a similar outcome.
Thank goodness, our Board of Finance caught this, took it out, and made the necessary cuts to responsibly balance our budget. It seems to me that we need to protect our town’s financial future in the same way that my husband and I protected our family’s years ago.
Reality matters.
Transparency matters. Accuracy matters. Let’s all try to remember this when it comes to both our home as well as our town budgets.
Lynn Hungaski
Newtown