Letter: The bone has been picked clean

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To the editor,

I commend Mr. Sirois’ attempt to control tax increases on the residents of the town of Naugatuck, but how many more referendums does he plan to solicit? The town has repeatedly said, there is literally nothing else that can be trimmed off the budget. There is simply no meat left on the bone. The town asked the valid question of where we want them to cut funding. His suggestion is to cut education?

On a scale from best to worst, Naugatuck High School ranked 136 out of 189 Connecticut high schools for educational quality. (SchoolDigger.com, 2015). Do our children need to suffer an even more dismal education to satisfy his ability to pay his fair share? Cutting more money from the school budget will only lead to cutting more teachers, increasing class sizes and an even worse education quality for the future. Do more teachers need to be pushed into unemployment or relocation?

Nobody wants to pay taxes. I am sure everyone could find better ways to spend their money. However, it is a simple fact of life that the town needs services. Trash collection, police officers, firefighters, just like education, all costs money. While I am happy that my children are grown and out of school, I fear what educational quality will be available for my grandchildren.

It is simple economics that as the cost to do business goes up, the cost to the consumer goes up. As the population increases, the number of children increases, the number of required educators increases. It is a paradox that requires a hard-nose approach at the federal level. As long as families continue to get bigger, or we allow more and more immigrants to set up residence in the Unites States, taxes will continue to increase everywhere. As we continue to merge more businesses together and form even larger corporations, the fewer small businesses there are.

The bone has been picked clean and the cabinets are bare. There are some serious decisions that need to be made at higher levels of government about controlling the escalating costs to families in this country. These are issues that neither Naugatuck, nor the entire valley combined can answer. More referendums will eventually lead to budget adoption by default when time runs out. Let us all accept defeat and move on.

William Gittings

Naugatuck

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