More and more towns across Rhode Island have eliminated their financial town meetings.
In fact, just a year ago Warren dropped its FTM and turned over almost the entire budget process — at …
This item is available in full to subscribers.
Please log in to continue |
Register to post eventsIf you'd like to post an event to our calendar, you can create a free account by clicking here. Note that free accounts do not have access to our subscriber-only content. |
Are you a day pass subscriber who needs to log in? Click here to continue.
More and more towns across Rhode Island have eliminated their financial town meetings.
In fact, just a year ago Warren dropped its FTM and turned over almost the entire budget process — at least the voting part — to the town council. That means five people in Warren get final say about what is included in the budget and what gets cut. Just five people decide what everyone else is going to pay for taxes.
Thankfully that is not the case in Barrington.
Some may argue that last week's special financial town meeting in Barrington took too long or presented logistical challenges to certain individuals. And in some cases, they might be right.
But more importantly, the special financial town meeting held at Barrington High School insured that the power to make big budgetary decisions still rests with the people who have to pay the bills. And that is how it should be.
In May, Barrington residents will be invited to another financial town meeting. That one will offer taxpayers an even greater opportunity to decide what next year's budgets will look like.
We're guessing that the crowd will again be large and the debate will again be impassioned. We're guessing the meeting might require more than a couple hours of residents' time.
Let's hope this is always the case.