Ledyard should vote ‘no’ on charter change

The November ballot in Ledyard will contain the referendum question: "Should the proposed charter revision be approved?" Details of the proposed changes to the town charter are on the town website. But unlike for Groton, the Ledyard charter revision has not received much publicity. Many of the proposed changes to the Ledyard charter are house-cleaning updates to reflect things already approved by Town Council resolution or other actions. However, it also contains a change of substance.

A change proposed to Section 5 says that in the event the state does not meet payments to the town that were anticipated when approving the budget, the council could schedule a second budget referendum. Ultimately, the council would most likely be obligated by this proposed charter revision to cut school and/or town services to balance a minimized budget.

For background, it is noted that the state contribution for the current fiscal year budget was significantly reduced after the town budget was adopted. The shortfall has been reconciled through a balanced combination of selected spending/service reduction, teacher’s union and town employee reduced compensation, and property tax increase.

Implementation of the change proposed for Section 5 would eliminate most of the options that were used to solve this unusual problem. To prevent such a future predicament and avoid arbitrary service cuts, vote "no" on the charter revision question. Jeffrey Kulo Ledyard