The NO override campaign has no clear vision for the town to address its financial woes.
We didn’t need Warrant Committee member Adam Dash to hold up a student’s tattered, 20 year old text book, as he did at last week’s Candidate’s Night debate, to grasp the depths to which our Town of Homes has fallen. Nor did we need him to heft the softball sized piece of pavement dislodged from a pothole outside his home to appreciate the truth of what he was saying: Belmont has woefully neglected its infrastructure, schools and town services for too long.
Note: This article first appeared in The Belmont Citizen Herald.
We understand the truth of what Adam said viscerally. As parents, we have seen our own children’s classes swell even as course offerings shrivel and fees jump. We crouch in decrepit carols at the crowded Belmont Public Library and skate around the bird droppings at the Viglirolo ice rink. Our cars drop into cavernous potholes.
If these are problems for you, as they are for me, then you expect and deserve to be told how your vote – “YES” or “NO” –on the proposed $4.5 million Proposition 2 ½ override will help to address those problems.
Our town’s leadership has a clear answer and a plan based on research and study by the Financial Task Force. It was the Task Force that recommended passage of the $4.5million override as a first step to putting Belmont back on track. In brief: revenue from the override will fund substantial, annual increases in investments in road and sidewalk repair. It will hire and retain teachers to keep course offerings in place and allow Belmont to add classes to respond to a sharp increase in student enrollment. Money will be set aside to create a budget stabilization fund to address future needs. This is the plan and vision that the YES for Belmont campaign is working to realize.
In contrast, the “No Override” campaign that has emerged in recent weeks has no plan for addressing those issues. Not only does the group not have a plan, they don’t even have an explanation – short of “financial mismanagement” – for the problems that face our Town of Homes. That’s a curious and troubling charge, coming from long time Warrant Committee members like No Campaign Treasurer Raffi Manjikian and Chairwoman Liz Allison. But there it is.
Mr. Dash (left) and Mr. Manjikian debate at the League of Women Voters’ Candidates Night.
What the No campaign does offer is a lot of folksy sayings. Mr. Manjikian, speaking opposite Mr. Dash at Candidates Night, said that after Belmont voters rejected the override, the town would “go back to the drawing board” and “sharpen our pencils.” What would be on that drawing board? What specific problems would those pencils be pressed into solving? He couldn’t say.
Asked by attendees at Candidates’ Night how the town and schools should cope with immediate issues created by the failure of the override, such as a projected $1.7 million school budget deficit, Mr. Manjikian offered no concrete ideas.
Asked how the town should respond if the planned cuts at Belmont High School in the wake of a “No” vote put the town afoul of the state mandatory minimum of 990 instructional hours, Mr. Manjikian had no thoughts.
Asked to explain how it was that our neighbor Lexington – which also gets 86% percent of its annual revenue from local property taxes – saw fit to pass $5.3 million in overrides to Belmont’s $0.00 in the last decade to support schools, roads and public safety, Manjikian brushed the question off, seemingly incurious about the goings on next door.
Unfortunately for us, the “No” camp’s lack of specifics hasn’t kept them silent. Instead, in a string of opinion pieces and letters, Manjikian and Allison have danced a jig around the gaps.
Manjikian has said he backs “an override,” just not this override. Mrs. Allison said the $1.7 million deficit in the schools “must be solved” – just not with new revenue. How? Easy: Belmont just has to find a way around those pesky (and expensive) state mandated special education costs. Oh: we should also stop hiring experienced teachers to head our classrooms. They cost too much.
I want you to put aside for a moment the “optics” of Mrs. Allison reclining in a $1 million dollar home on Belmont Hill and grousing about the very middle class salaries of the teachers who educate our children and the men and women who plow our roads. Recognize that her numbers don’t add up – not even close.
Recognize that the cause of what ails us is simple. We shut our eyes, let inflation eat into our budget and went from addressing problems to kicking the can down the road. When fiscal reality took hold, we started scrimping. We stopped adequately funding our pension obligations, and now have to divert more money to cover those costs. We put off road repairs and wound up with roads full of potholes. We cut books and other supplies out of the school budget. Now we have outdated textbooks that are falling apart.
Is it a good thing that a “No” campaign has emerged? I think it is. Their lack of hard answers and the absence of a vision for our shared future underscores the need for the override to pass. Let’s hope their dissenting voice, muddled though it is, spurs those of us who care about Belmont and our shared future to speak (and honk) a bit louder. Send a few more e-mails. Make a few more phone calls. Hold those “Yes for Belmont” signs a bit higher. I hope you’ll join me in doing so – and in voting YES on April 7.