Mr. Katz,

All of your analysis aside, in cities and town with Financial Town Meetings (like Tiverton, Little Compton, Barrington and the like) the people have made the decisions that you decry and reject. The people have voted the increases not Mr. Cotta, nor the Town Councilors nor anyone else. It is still the purest form of democracy in New England.

So yes, budgets should be built with the past, and future, in mind, but to blame decisions of your community members on "government" is inaccurate and misleading. People are much smarter than you give them credit for and to suggest otherwise is demeaning to your fellow man. I haven't followed Tiverton that closely, but my guess is that residetns had reasons for voting as they did, reasons you probably did not agree with or support, making them no less valid to anyone but you.

Voters always have a choice Joe, either at the ballot box or at the Town Meeting.

Are you really suggesting that Tiverton voters had no choices and could do nothing over the nine year period Mr. Katz laments? It appears they just choose to support increases. Once gain, democracy.

Justin, is the debt service duly voted by the voters of Tiverton for the $40M in infrastructure the town has invested in over the last decade included in your "78% increase in the cost of local government services"? Or have you masked that as you and you TCC brethren are apt to do? If not, what are the specific services that you object to that have been "confiscated from residents" by these "con artists"?

I think you left out the the FTM of May 2010 where "they (the TCC, of course) subverted a budget-supporting vote by pulling out the political stops and essentially calling for a do-over vote the following week." Did you forget that already?

DSilva,

It seems to me that I didn't actually write the column to which you're responding. I didn't blame "government" for decisions apart from the people. I noted that Tiverton's taxes have just about doubled in a decade and suggested that fact should be taken into consideration when setting the new budget requests, pace Mr. Cotta.

More specifically, the fact that democracy plays in a government budget process doesn't change the fact that it is different and in some ways more troublesome than a family budgeting process or a business budgeting process. Yes, the people of Tiverton were far too apathetic up to 2007 (after which they became just "too apathetic") and we all deserve the blame for that. The point is that government processes construct backstops that benefit government and its employees, such that changing direction is much more difficult for taxpayers than a similar response from consumers would be after a decade of, say, paying too much for phone service.

How would you react, I wonder, if the phone company suggested to you that you should not consider how much it's increased your bill over the past few years, but only pay attention to the increase this year, for which increase it can offer an infinite number of justifications?

Tiverton_Red,

As I showed in the essay, the 78% is simply the amount that the levy has grown. No masking involved.

I can't respond to your next sentence because it isn't coherent. The town has not confiscated services from residents; it's confiscated money. That's what taxation does. And I'm not sure why you put "con artist" in quotation marks, since it's not a phrase that I used in the article to which you're referring.

As for your rewriting of the 2010 FTM history, it's positively Stalinist. The red-shirt "townies" spent something like an hour of the allotted time on a completely frivolous effort to oust the moderator. The same crowd then wasted copious time trying to skip around from page to page in the docket and use amendments to particular motions to move the entire docket. TCC wasn't the group doing the wave and ensuring that the moderator could not be efficient.

Moreover, there was no "redo" vote. No vote on the school budget had been taken, which means that there was nothing to "redo." In 2008, town officials came back to the FTM and Mr. Cotta moved a scarcely reduced sum as an overt second bite at the same apple.

Justin it seemed clear to me that day, that the Yellow Shirts of the TCC thought that stretching things to a second day would be good for them. Why else would Caron have played the violin? They thought that the parents may not want to attend a second saturday in a row. The TCC played some games and ran some obvious tricks the year before. IT seems that the FTM was a good enough tool for setting the budget when it worked out the way you wanted but now it must be changed to protect us from ourselves. The people that you demonize with your constant name calling and stereo typing are your neighbors and the towns people (or townies) that you live with. I am not a teacher, not in a union and did not where a red shirt. I am just someone who has found the TCC to be a group that stretches the truth to put it nicely.

Stoney:

Really? The only stall tactic you can cite is Jeff's mock violin while somebody else was speaking? I'd suggest that what "seems clear to you" only does so because it serves the narrative that you prefer. There were unnecessary delays toward the end of the meeting, but from where I sat, the reason was an exhausted and frazzled moderator (who continually rebuffed Jeff Caron, if you'll recall), and TCC had almost no role in reducing him to that condition.

Frankly, I like the FTM and have not advocated for its replacement. It was not TCC that wanted to advocate placement of the budgetary process in the town council's hands. And to the extent that TCC wishes to modify the FTM, it isn't to "protect us from ourselves," it's to broaden the number of voters who get to be "us," by replacing the FTM with an all day referendum.

Justin I realize that you are smart guy so I wonder who you can accuse me of having a narrative that I prefer and not see the same for yourself. I guess the same could be said of everything that you write and publish as well. Or is it that you and the TCC have an exclusive track to the truth. I would also say that while I did not see it at the moment, the video tape clearly shows several yellow shirts(O'Dell ) doing a fist pump and looking like he just won the SuperBowl at the end of the meeting. I also saw a yellow shirt yelling and screaming at a young woman and threatening to take her husband outside. Maybe those things fit my narrative and not yours but they happened.

I'm not sure why you think I'm unaware of my own narrative. I clearly have one, but given the amount of writing that I do, it's possible to confirm that my opinion on the FTM hasn't changed.

I'm not surprised, by the way, that people on the TCC side were relieved to see the meeting end. For several hours of pandemonium, it seemed Robert's Rules were barely in effect and decorum was entirely out the window.

But being relieved that a hostile vote hadn't passed by the end of the meeting is not the same as having planned for that outcome. And even so, it's far from a "redo" vote, which uniquely undermines the principle of democracy.

So it was actually a plan by the evil redshirted ones to have a mostly clueless moderator and stretch the meeting out into two days in the hope that the yellow shirted ones would not come back next week. Your constant feelings of superiority and and the divisivness that you speak with are amazing to behold. It seems that your goal is to further divide this town according to your narrative andbpreconceived notions.

No. I didn't say that there was a plan on anybody's part. I said that the most substantial reasons the meeting ran over its time limit originated with the red shirts.

Sorry to hear you think there is "blame" to go around for providing an education to our children, Justin. Unfortunately too many of you TCC'ers don't have children in the system and think that way. You are only concerned with their tax bill and not the value of what is provided. There aren't exactly a lot of luxuries being provided to the residents of this town.

The TCC wants the voters to believe that all of the the budget increases are solely the result of the "greedy" unions as opposed to building and maintaining the infrastructure of the town (which they ironically "support", until of course it's actually time to appropriate the funds). Just to help clarify things for you, people provide services, not buildings; but you're obviously not going to have one without the other. You and the TCC don't appear to understand the distinction, but I think you should.

Joe, I'm glad to see you and the TCC have ended your smear campaign against the hard working, tax paying municipal workers in this town and your false claims, and yes, lies of "pay increases of 2 to 3 times inflation for the last 20 years". It's a start.

Just as you have tried to deceive the citizens with those claims you are now trying to deceive them again by ignorantly claiming that anyone said "all" of the tax increases were for infrastructure. Why can't you and the TCC stop lying to us? Could it be the facts don't support many of your claims?

The truth will set you free.

Joe, if I remember correctly you spent alot of time posting in the other blog under several screen names and or characters. Was it okay for you then and what about those whose post in agreement with you under screen names?

Yes, Joe, the first time I posted here I was new to this forum. I had never posted here or on the other site but read it and the stories on the East Bay. Just for future reference would you please post a team roster of the red and yellow teams or at lest the main players and top draft picks. And again just to be clear, you never posted under any names other than Joe Sousa, correct?

Well, it is good to see you have matured, although I still am not anyone but myself. If you want to think that, I won't interfere with your conspiracies and muddled political theories. Are you putting together those teams rosters for us all to look over? I want to see if I know any of the evil unionists on the red team or any of the honest and truth telling patriots in the yellow shirts.

Also Joe, you just commented on the red team lying and lied one post previous to that when you said you only post as yourself and then in the next post admitted to being the Notorious online potty mouth named Jethro. What's next Crazy Richard. Biker Hd or one of those other whacko s?

Folks, please read our Terms of Use at the bottom of the homepage, especially the sections "Acceptable Use Policy." Please stay on topic. Unacceptable posts will be deleted.

That's the way you have decided to identify them Joe.

I find the constant references to red shirts, red team, yellow team, etc. childish and narrow minded. It does nothing to represent the multiplicity of views and reasons of individuals for voting one way or another. I hope I speak for the majority when I say "knock it off," including the author of the above opinion piece.

Mr. Katz, I don't wholly disagree with what you have written, but I believe you lead off with a false, or at least a narrow or misleading, interpretation of Mr. Cotta's comments regarding the budget process. When I first read these comments a week or so ago in another media outlet, my immediate reaction was that he was referring to the rancor of the past three FTM's and not to the budget process itself. In other words, let's get over that and get on with business. If that is what he is saying, I applaud him. Sadly the tone of the discussion contained in this thread from all participants is a direct reflection of the reasons that this town is unable to conduct business reasonably and with compromise.

I will agree with Joe Sousa for the first time. I just hate to see so much stereotyping done. I am surely guilty of it myself at times. There are good people from many different political stripes in this town and there are also people who act superior and insult their neighbors on all sides as well.

Brad,

Our interpretations of Cottas comments are clearly different; that doesn't make mine "misleading." I tried to find a recording of the meeting but was unable to do so. However, my interpretation is in line with discussions that I've had with people in the room.

One can say, "we've got to get past the unnecessary rancor" in many ways that wouldn't lead a journalist to summarize the comments as "not to dwell on the previous fiscal years that have brought property tax increases to the town."

As for the color coding, I'd refer both you and Gus to my first Patch column:

<a href="http://tiverton.patch.com/articles/the-coming-clash-of-yellow-and-red">http://tiverton.patch.com/articles/the-coming-clash-of-yellow-and-red</a>;

To be sure, no binary scheme can represent a multiplicity, but it remains a useful tool for describing basic thrusts of opposing forces. It becomes something other than useful when applied in order to tar all members of the broad and varied group with the stains of its most objectionable elements.

That link didn't quite work; let's try it again:

http://tiverton.patch.com/articles/the-coming-clash-of-yellow-and-red

can you vote without ID, can you drive a car, can you speak at the town meetimg without saying who you are? it's to bad you don't HAVE to id yourself here probaly would surpress discusion, so Tiverton Red do you ever post here to do anything but advocate against the TCC!I find you to be a spin doctor also, very clever and thoughtful of you to be playing for the next election, however the man who speaks in public while hideing his name has something to hide indeed, still looking for Stony Larue in the phonebook,but you'll be glad to know i think i might have proof that the TCC might have been connected to the swift boat crew, more evil deeds still to follow!

Jim L. Who cares if someone posts under their real name? You can't be serious about looking in the phone book. Hey, if you want to know who I am, look up Motley Crue. If SL thinks that the TCC is no good, so be it. You think they're great. Wonderful. I like the Crue, you like Elton John. So what? What matters here is that a healthy discussion of the points can be made, but the immature people here keep name calling like their still wetting their pants in the sand box. Move on and just stick to the point. Everyone! If you want to call out someone on a comment, that's fine, but the name calling, the red shirts, etc. is really moronic.

Rob Coulter and David Nelson are TCC members. duh. Why do you play games Jim, just man up and at least be honest in your debate.

Justin, keeping track of the TCC spin is apparently confusing you. First of all, Jeff didn’t force anyone to do anything. The voters supported what they thought was best for the town. This surplus was generated in FY10.
To refresh your memory, that is the year the budget committee recommended a higher appropriation and a successful motion to cut the school funding was made (by a budget committee/TCC member) on the floor of FTM. To imply that “the people campaigned to get the FTM to raise the tax levy” is just plain wrong in this case.
Here’s where you spin really gets unbelievable: How or why would the town raise the tax levy if it didn’t need/appropriate it? That just doesn’t make any sense.

Maybe I am confused. Explain to me how a cut to school funding resulted in a near-million-dollar surplus on the municipal side...

I shouldn't neglect to mention, for those who aren't as in the weeds on this stuff as some of us (and still reading the thread...) that the school department never actually experienced a cut, thanks to magic Obama money, which it successfully folded into its normal budget the following year by threatening to close brand new schools.

By the way, Tiverton_Red, there's no spin. There's a conversation and sincere disagreements and, yes, possible misstatements from people trying to work full time to support families while carrying on the civic participation.

Regardless, if you're talking about FY10, your point merits further explanation beyond what your animosity apparently led you to provide. So, you're saying that Jeff "low-balled" the revenue estimates to keep the tax levy increase down --- although it was still 4%, I believe, despite the restrained growth of the school budget --- and then when actual revenue came in higher, the town had budgeted for less than it received. So the remedy for this would have been what? For the FTM to approve higher budgets so the town could have spent all of the money it received and still increase taxes 4%?

It would also be helpful if you would offer a substantive explanation of what numbers Jeff "low-balled" and why his estimates should have been unreasonable at the time.

No, no, no. You've made very specific allegations suggesting that you already have evidence of a particular strategy. "Confirmed or disproved shortly" doesn't cut it, particularly when your accusation is counterintuitive. Somebody hoping to keep the levy down would INFLATE non-levy revenue to make the increase seem unnecessary. Indeed, as I recall, Jeff was accused of doing just that by citing the governor's education aid estimate for FY10.

The only way your accusation makes sense (at least that I can see) is if Jeff assumed some sort of refund check midyear to return surplus taxation to the taxpayers. If that was the plan, as you allege, then why would we evil spinmeisters in TCC wait months and months for an audit to discover what we supposedly already knew to be true: that we were being overtaxed?

oh i am sorry i thoufgt they were town councilers voted in by the majority of the voters, my mistake, and i do not know all all the politcians in town by their first and last name

because like most voter i only pay attention to the folks i agree with, on a regular basis, thats the way life is, but i am open to other agreement or suggestions made by anyone, and as for nikki she gained much off my respect in nameing names ( most of which i will try to connect to faces and statements) she at least is honest, and i believe a sincere person , and when were funds seized in this town?Now in the name of honesty and no spin i believe you change TCC to TTC tiverton town counsel, you and rush both need YOUR meds
l

wait or you now saying we are being over taxed? What is our money? the taxpayers? YES i agree, lower the tax rate so they don,t take more of OUR money

That's an interesting point, Justin and you are absolutely right. That's all the more reason to be forthright with the taxpayers. If Jeff is fixated on the levy compounding, he should have been more careful with his budget estimates, it may have kept the levy down in the long run. Instead we have a big fat surplus under his watch and a larger levy number to compound each year. That's why many have not been happy with the TCC leadership that we've seen so far. We need a little more integrity. I'm confident the new (old) budget committee chair will provide the integrity that's been lacking in his absence. Why don't you give him a chance before you criticize him? He's not even presented his first budget yet.

ciao

For the record the final revenue used in both FY10 and FY11 was exactly that approved by the Town Council and forwarded to the Budget Committee.

It is true that underestimating revenue generates a GF surplus. It is also true that at that time the GF was under the 3%. TC motive and conjecture aside, these are the facts.

Tiverton Red,

You do not know the real Chris Cotta.

Chris is a lot of the reason why we have a nine year 7+% tax levy increase. When I was chair the FY10 increase was about 2.4% (from memory) and FY11 increase was about 7% (I fought my hardest to get it to 4.4% but lost). Even with my tenure included as year 8 and 9, years 1-7 under cotta averaged over 7% compounded to make the nine year average about 7.3%.

Cotta will defend himself by saying the bonds and revenue shortfalls were the taxpayers problem, not his. But if he cared one shred about the taxpayers he would made the hard decisions needed to absorb the bond debt /shortfalls into a “normal” budget.

In my four years with him on the BC I do not remember A SINGLE conversation about the 'ability of the taxpayer' - which is required by charter. I only saw him substantively reduce a budget once, and that was because he had to get under the old 5.5% cap. Chris is a rubber stamp for more spending.

He has submitted over a dozen budgets, the final one at the stolen FTM in 2008, at which he played key roles in overturning a vote of the people.

Although he and I are on opposite sides of the spectrum (I for reducing spending and he for rubber stamping spending increases), I did respect Chris until I saw him in action at the 2008 FTM.

Jeff, I appreciate most of your comments except for "But if he cared one shred about the taxpayers he would made the hard decisions needed to absorb the bond debt /shortfalls into a “normal” budget." It is obviously your opinion and not the opinion of the majority. The townspeople will move ahead with our without you and your endless stream of misleading charts and graphs implying otherwise. However, a simple recognition that jamming the new debt service into the existing revenue stream would have basically shut down the town's services would have eliminated much of the hostility and tension you and the TCC have created over the past 2 years. What's done is done. There is no need for the continued bitterness of you and the TCC, it will not move us ahead.

Interesting comment from Chris Cotta in another media outlet this week. "My immediate goal is to stop the divisiveness. There's a financial situation in town where there is not enough revenue, I want to be more reasonable and more open and see what the concerns are."

I'm not sure how I'll feel about the next budget (because I haven't seen it yet), but if he sticks to these words, it's a promising start.

"There is dusk and dawn; there is early evening and early morning; there are full moons, new moons, and cloudy days. And yet, there is night and day."

Yes, Justin, but a person who limits their vision to high noon and dead midnight lives a very limited life.

Referencing the binary categories of night and day for limited rhetorical applications is not equivalent to limiting one's vision.

the TCC may have been invovled with the shooting of President Lincohn( and remember when you read TCC remember it means Tiverton Town Council)

Justin, you claim that I "assume that each side is half-right, which is a position that strikes me as prima facie absurd." I did not say this, nor did I even imply this. What I wrote was, " Until you begin to practice some intellectual relativism in these pieces and adopt your own fairness doctrine, you will never be more than half right and you will always be half wrong." Perhaps you need to better understand the meaning of the Fairness Doctrine. I use it somewhat metaphorically here, but it is still appropriate. It might also inform your jornalistic pretensions.

I'm not sure why you felt the need to defend and legitimize your arguments again. My use of quotation marks around key phrases was meant to imply that there might be multiple perspectives or interpretations of these events. In fact, I lend your arguments legitimacy by crediting you for describing them "nicely and appropriately."

As far as your final point, as someone who works with six figure budgets I agree that you must consider previous years. That is common sense. But I have already provided my personal interpretation of Mr. Cotta's words, and I have supported this interpretation by quoting more recent recent statements.

It is clear that we have different interpretations of fairness. That's okay, but it is on this point that we must part company.

Joe it would be easy for anyone reading your posts to also call you a spin master or to call Justin Katz one. Does having a different opinion than you make a person a spin master?

i believe that nikki six and tivertonred maybe may be nothing but union spin doctors, I heard the TCC wants to close all the food pantrys so the poor with move away , then more people who can afford tax increases every year will move in