The Town refused to face reality. Although 342 said "NO" at Town Meeting, the supporters of spending whatever it takes, including public employees, family and friends who vote in Chatham, turned out in sufficient numbers to prevail in a close vote. Despite the hard times for Chatham's resident taxpayers, the budget, packed with pay raises of 6% and 7%, passed.

Now, heading into FY10 and FY11, the Town has to go cold turkey. It won’t be pretty as it has used up so much of its reserves and extra cash to support the FY10 budget that it is $2 million in deficit. It gave away a lot of money with those startling pay raises in a below zero deflation environment that won’t be available to help prevent layoffs in FY10 and FY11. The Town had its chance to save for the tought times, but couldn’t break its overspending habit.

Since the Town has refused to hand over to the Finance Committee or anyone else what the trend line is on Local Revenues (hotel/motel and other taxes and fees), we don’t know if those revenues are declining, as they are in all other Cape towns, or whether they will meet or exceed forecast. The Town will certainly try to raise taxes for FY11, probably seek overrides and special votes for capital expenditures to pay for the FY11 budget, but if the taxpayer protest on May 11th is any indication the Town will have trouble even maintaining taxes at the FY10 level. There will probably be agitation to put a new hotel-type tax in place on short term rentals (such as is done by many resident and nonresident taxpayers in July and August to pay the mortgage) to give the Town more money. Why is it always that the government should get more money to spend and the taxpyayer should get along with less?

The first charge backs for the bonds sold for Taj Mahal II (the PD/Annex) and the first stage of the sewer project may both hit in FY11, although FY12 is more likely, and be piled on top of the operating budget, which can’t be allowed to go up. If the Town isn’t able to get any tax increases in FY11, it will have to make severe reductions in spending, unless money hidden away in secret accounts suddenly appears. The Town may luck out and FY10 and FY11 may turn out to be not as bleak as most are forecasting, but that’s what the Town has bet on. Most of us did not think that was a wise thing to do. But spending is addictive.

Mark Steyn, a world-famous author, commentator and raconteur , made a remark the other day that applies to Chatham as well as to the Massachusetts and federal governments:

There's a lot of evidence that the major problem the Western world faces is governments spend more than they can raise from their citizens.

Eventually, that catches up with you." –
- Mark Steyn

By masking the real cost of the budget by scattering spending among six different articles, the Town got its money for FY10, but has placed itself in peril by emptying the cupboard to pay for “just one more.”