Update: 5/5/3:30 Orange Town Clerk Pat O’Sullivan issued a letter stating that the petition signatures were verified. The budget will be voted on at a referendum on May 19, noon to 8 p.m., at the High Plains Community Center, 525 Orange Center Road. Absentee ballots will be available on May 10.
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O’Sullivan received 359 petition signatures and rejected 23 of them. Only 200 were needed to force the referendum. The budget would have otherwise been voted on at the May 9, 7:30 p.m., Annual Town Meeting at High Plains Community Center.
The Amity School District portion of the budget was already approved in a May 3 referendum. Orange voted 255 to 100 to approve the budget.
UPDATE: 5/5/15 10:30 a.m.
Orange Town Clerk Pat O’Sullivan is in the process of verifying the signatures on the petitions handed in this morning. Selectman Mitch Goldblatt told The Orange Times that more than 350 petitions were signed.
The Orange Town Budget will be voted on at the May 9 Town Meeting.
Unless it isn’t.
Democratic Town Committee Chair Jody Dietch circulated a petition to force the budget to go to referendum She needed 200 signatures by May 6 to be delivered and verified by Town Clerk Pat O’Sullivan.
As of Friday, April 29, Dietch felt confident she had the requisite number of signatures.
“After she presents the petitions, my office will check and verify that the signatures are all Orange electors or taxpayers, and if they are, I’ll send it to the town attorney,” O’Sullivan said.
O’Sullivan said this was a first for him so he wasn’t entirely certain how it would proceed from there, if the Board of Selectmen would need to hold a meeting or if there would need to be any deliberation.
“According to the town charter it appears that once the signatures on a petition for referendum are verified, the question will go to referendum,” O’Sullivan said.
The charter does allow for the budget to be voted on at the annual Town Meeting instead of during a referendum. Proponents of the Town Meeting vote argue that voter turnout at referendums does not justify the cost of ballots and manning the polls. In past years, polling hours were already reduced from starting at 6 a.m. to starting at noon to reduce some cost.
However, Dietch and others noted that the Town Meeting requires that anyone wanting to vote on the budget must be at the High Plains Community Center at 7:30 p.m., May 9. The vote may be by show of hands and thus not anonymous.
Furthermore there is the issue of attendance.
Last year’s budget referendum totaled 209 voters, just nine more electors and taxpayers than Dietch needs to force a referendum. In 2014, there were 251 voters in the budget referendum.
The town meeting technically requires a quorum of at least 100 Orange electors or taxpayers be present. While no-one has challenged a call of quorum for years, there have not actually been that many participants at the town meeting in quite some time. As reported in the May 28, 2015 edition of The Orange Times, the town meeting that year had less than 40 residents actually in attendance.
The proposed 2016 budget itself is a 1.96 percent increase over the current operating budget, coming in at $66,260,039. The mil rate could go from 31.4 to 32.2.
A referendum for the Amity school budget was set for May 3. Orange shares the cost of operating Amity Regional School District No. 5 with Woodbridge and Bethany. The Orange Town Meeting is set for May 9. Whether or not a town budget referendum will be held depends on the signatures handed in by Dietch on or before May 6.