Town Election Results, March 12, 2024
Voters reject town and school operating budgets and several warrant articles.
The town election results include some major surprises.
The big theme was the high levels of opposition to spending. Usually, the voters approve all or nearly all of the warrant articles recommended to them. Not this year. Both the town and the school operating budgets were rejected. Also rejected were warrant articles for road improvements, raising the Fire Chief’s stipend, repaving the library parking lot, and developing a proposal for a new police station.
These election results highlighted the differences between the preferences of the voters who show up for deliberative sessions and the much larger number of voters who show up on election day.
At the school deliberative session, the operating budget was amended to add $40k for a para-educator. This passed 35 to 29. Budget Committee member Tom Butkiewicz warned the voters that the increase could cause the proposed budget to fail. He was prescient. The Budget Committee voted to not recommend the proposed budget, which then went on to defeat at the ballot box, 651 to 609 - a 6.9% margin.
The town’s operating budget failed by a smaller margin, 602 to 574 - 4.9%.
At the town deliberative session, there were efforts to zero out Warrant Article #6’s increase to the Fire Chief’s stipend. This failed, 36 to 78, but at the ballot box the voters swung hard the other way, rejecting the stipend increase by 755 to 494.
Clearly, the spending preferences of those who attended the deliberative sessions were greatly different from those of the voters on election day.
Also rejected by the voters were Article #8 for the police station, Article #10 for the library parking lot, Article #12 for road improvements, and Article #14 for re-assessing. All of these were unanimously recommended by the Board of Selectmen. Article #8 was unanimously recommended by the Budget Committee, too. The others were all recommended by the Budget Committee with dissent.
Some voters complained that Article #12 combined too many highway projects into a single yes/no vote. One or more of the projects might have been approved had they been separated. There were also concerns that the Highway Director was getting too much discretion about what dirt road entrances to pave.
The impact on the school of having the default budget imposed upon it will be modest. It’s just a 1.0% reduction from the originally proposed budget. However, the impact on the town will be huge. It’s a 5.8% reduction. The first few meetings of the Board of Selectmen will likely need to be focused on how to cut spending that much. To get a reduction that large, positions may need to be eliminated. Exacerbating the problem for the board is that it’s unclear what spending the voters would prefer to cut.
The causes of these results are difficult to assess. Is it the recent reduction of household disposable income due to inflation? The shock of the large increases to the January tax bills? A disjoint between what the Board of Selectmen (and to a smaller extent, the Budget Committee) thinks is a priority and what the voters think? A failure of either communication or transparency on the part of town government with regard to the spending needs? Surlyness on the part of voters who felt the town was poorly managed last year?
Whatever the case, the voters were substatitially less willing to approve the board’s recommendations as in the previous years since the adoption of SB2. Until now, the voters had always approved operating budgets by wide margins. The 2024 vote on both the town and school operating budgets represents a large reversal from the past few years.
Town Operating Budget approved 746 to 385
School Operating Budget approved 704 to 452
Town Operating Budget approved 690 to 578
School Operating Budget approved 951 to 323
Town Operating Budget approved 654 to 454
School Operating Budget approved 677 to 452
Budget Committee
Tom Butkiewicz again failed to be re-elected to his seat on the committee. Last year, he was appointed to the committee to fill an empty seat after losing that year’s election with 444 votes. This year he got 459 votes. He first got on the committee in 2020. That year his was the only name on the ballot for three open seats. There were three write-in candidates, two of whom nearly matched Butkiewicz’s vote total.
Brent Tweed lost his re-election bid, obtaining only 493 votes versus the 534 he scored last year.
John Decker’s election to the Board of Selectmen makes him ineligible to remain on the Budget Committee. The committee’s first order of business for 2024 will be to elect a volunteer to take Decker’s seat.
Perhaps the committee will also discuss why so many of the warrant articles they recommended were rejected by the voters and how the committee will need to approach its job in 2024 given how the low amount of spending this year, when combined with the 4% tax cap, will severely constrain the committee’s ability to recommend spending next year.
Board of Selectmen
Voters declined to re-elect Ben Bartlett to a third term. Bartlett’s support dwindled to 447 in 2024 versus the 656 votes he received in 2021.
Matt Shirland, however, picked up sizable support. He ran last year, but lost with 514 votes. After Tiler Eaton resigned from the board, Shirland was appointed. This time Shirland got 688 votes, coming in a close second to John Decker’s 698 votes.
Write-in candidate Jaye Vilchock received 321 votes.
