Before I moved to Barrington in 1976, I had never witnessed anything like a financial town meeting. In most cities and towns, the budget is adopted by the mayor, a vote of the council or a vote of the school committee and the council after public hearings. There is no public vote.

The financial town meeting is peculiar to New England, but since we all now live in an echo chamber of social media and like-minded friends, the financial town meeting gives us a rare opportunity to hear other ideas, adjust our priorities and redirect the priorities of our elected and appointed officials.

The Barrington Financial Town Meeting is, in fact, just the end of a very long budget process in which we have many opportunities to express our opinions. After working on the municipal budget, the town manager presents it to the town council, who goes through it, line by line, and accepts public input. The superintendent compiles the school budget from the requests of the school administrators, and then the school committee goes through that budget, line by line, and accepts public comment. The appropriations committee spends the next several months going through both budgets, line by line, in public meetings with public input and then conducts a formal public hearing and makes final adjustments before recommending the budget two weeks later to the financial town meeting, where any registered Barrington voter has the right to ask questions and make alterations to the recommended budget.

The financial town meeting is only the last stage of a long process but also the one stage where every voter has equal status with the town’s elected and appointed officials.

When the Barrington school population was declining and the buildings were aging in the 1970's and 80’s, the school budget became so lean that there were repeated attempts at the FTMs to restore school funding, and those attempts were a bellwether for what was about to happen: an evaluation by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges put the Barrington schools on probation for two years, mostly because of the condition of our school buildings.

During a recession in the 1990’s, Barrington voters turned out in record numbers (over 2,000, over two nights) and made numerous motions to cut the school and municipal budgets. The municipal budget remained intact, but the school budget was cut by $600,000, another bellwether message to our elected officials that the voters could not or would not accept repeated tax increases beyond cost of living adjustments.

Despite the fact that the financial town meeting is an anachronism, it has served the Town of Barrington well. In good times, the meeting turnout is low and the budget passes almost without comment, but in difficult times, every voter has a final opportunity to redirect town priorities and spending without facing the risk that the whims of disgruntled voters reject the budget completely and force the town to begin a fiscal year with no budget at all.

The 2019 FTM may well have been another bellwether, and it is important that we now focus on deciphering the message rather than shooting the messenger.

Julie P. Califano
Barrington

Ms. Califano has served as town moderator from 2008 to present. She also served on the town council from 1986 to 1994.