Posted by Chris Dehnel. The author is the Democratic Town Committee chairman.
To the Editor:
Vernon Board of Education Chair Dean Houle recently resigned from the Republican Town Committee and changed his voter registration to unaffiliated, in response to cuts, taken by the Mayor and approved by Town Council Republicans, to the bipartisan BoE budget request.
I applaud Houle for recognizing that the Mayor’s draconian cuts would damage our already struggling schools, and thereby our whole town. And I applaud BoE members Laura Bush and Anne Fischer for joining Democrats Amarjit Buttar, Michele Arn, Kyle Percy, and Terri Goldich in proposing a sensible, adequate budget that addressed our schools’ very real challenges.
But while Houle seems to have seen the light, I can’t help wondering where his (now former) fellow Republicans have been for the better part of the last decade, as Republican-dominated Town Councils have slowly squeezed our school system, and Republican-dominated BoEs have let it happen.
It shouldn’t really be about party – as Houle, Bush, and Fischer have proved this year.
It’s possible to put ideology aside and focus on the investment a great town requires – but, sadly, it has turned out to be about party, in fact, in recent years. For as long as I’ve been involved in town politics, the entrenched Republican establishment has been promising us both great schools and lower taxes, but they haven’t truly delivered either.
Maybe it’s time to try something different?
Bill Dauphin
Vernon
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