This year’s financial town referendum offered a little bit of everything: The good. The bad. The yet to be determined.

The good was turnout. The town’s first-ever FTR drew nearly 1,700 registered voters into Barrington Town Hall on May 27 to fill out a lengthy ballot — two sides, more than three dozen questions. People waited in long lines to vote and that should speak loudly to local officials. It is a clear sign that this approach succeeded in its effort to become more accessible to residents. 

The bad. The new FTR process forced residents to look at one specific part of the budget in an effort to affect any real change: The municipal budget line items. Here’s why: Officials said budget amendments of more than $50,000 required nearly 3,000 signatures from registered voters. That’s a tall task, and it was made more difficult because residents had just a few weeks to try to collect those signatures. 

The other amendment option was to propose a change of $50,000 or less to any line item. Well, only the municipal budget has line items. The school budget is a single, bottom line budget. So when people looked to reduce the overall budget increase, they had only one feasible way to do so: Target municipal budget line items. There are more than 300 municipal budget line items. 

Some officials may want to blame residents for proposing the changes, but it was town officials who created the system that forces residents to pinpoint budget line items.

The “yet to be determined.” The Barrington Town Council’s immediate reaction to their own creation — calling for big changes right away — left some people feeling uneasy. A handful of residents pointed out at the June 1 meeting that the council’s discussion looked a lot like a sour grapes reaction to the results of the FTR amendments (25 of the 36 budget changes were voted through). One resident said it appeared like the council wanted to re-educate people; another said it looked like the council was flipping the bird to everyone in town. 

Instead of rushing to make changes to the FTR, officials should take a longer, deeper dive into what worked and what didn’t, and build a better product for the future. 

It’s hard not to have some concerns that the council’s proposed changes to the FTR (likely done with a helping hand from the same solicitor’s office that drafted the initial FTR system) will be an over-correction to the amendment votes, further restricting the public’s ability to participate in the budget process. (After all, the FTR ballot only offered one option when it came time to vote on the proposed budget: “Approve.”)

We suggest Barrington residents — regular folks and town officials alike — take a look at Peter Clifford’s letter to the editor this week. Clifford suggests a handful of changes that could give taxpayers more power in the process. Clifford’s call to require an FTR vote to exceed the 4% tax cap is a great starting point.