Charlestown 2024/2025 Budget Approved With Only 254 People Voting
Only 254 People Voted – Thank You To Everyone Who Did Vote!
- Charlestown’s 2025 Budget passed with 183 in favor of the budget and 71 against.
- The number of voters was down by over 1,000 from previous years’ numbers.
- The tax rate is estimated to be $5.78 per thousand dollars of valuation
Why Was Voter Turnout So Low?
- In previous years the town sent a mail ballot via the U.S. Postal Service to each of the town’s registered voters to make voting on the budget easier and also to raise awareness of the budget vote. This year the Town Council discontinued this citizen outreach, resulting in a significant reduction in participation.
- The town did not send the May “Pipeline” newsletter in time to arrive in advance of the vote. Most voters did not receive the “Pipeline,” with information about the budget, until Monday, June 3 – the day of the vote. The announcement of the time and where to vote does not appear until page three. Voters would have had to open and carefully read the “Pipeline” to know that the polls were closing at 8 p.m. on the day they received the newsletter.
Charlestown Citizens Alliance did create a detailed post about the vote at our website and sent that to our newsletter, Facebook, and Twitter (X) subscribers. The Town Council majority’s political website and Facebook had no notice of the vote.
The Town Council majority claims full transparency because everything is available somewhere on the Town’s website. It is true the information is there. If you listen to hundreds of hours of meeting video, you can find a discussion or vote on an important topic. But few people in town have that amount of time or are that engaged, and without a stronger effort at outreach, budgets and other important votes will continue to pass with very few people participating.
July 19, 2024 @ 7:52 am
You ONLY had 254 people voting BECAUSE YOU DON’T NOTIFY the tax payers a week in advance!! I FOUND OUT about the vote THE NIGHT it was happening AFTER getting out of my 2nd job and it was TOO LATE TO VOTE! You should be mailing out small postcards to ALL THE TOWN TAX PAYERS A WEEK BEFORE. People have to work and I have to jobs. I need to know ATLEAST A WEEK in advance so I can try to adjust my work schedule in order to be able to make the time to go vote. I don’t have a regular computer and I shouldn’t have to download some childish FB app on my phone to know about voting. We still have mailboxes event should be getting a small post card in the mail atleast WEEK ahead! If You can mail A 2 page charlestown newsletter to everyone then you can mail A small postcard to notify about a voting situation. I got the news letter in the mail THE DAY OF VOTING taking me voting was happening and ended at 8pm. I don’t get home till 7:30 then I cook dinner and I look at my mail while I’m eating at 8:30 every night. Seems like you don’t want everyone voting since you refuse to notify us in a proper manner. When will you change your ways??
July 19, 2024 @ 8:04 am
Hi Lisa, we share your concern that there is not enough outreach, that is what this post is about. Only one of the CCA endorsed Town Council members, Susan Cooper, won in 2022. We have very little influence on the Town Council. The main source of outreach for the budget vote, the Ninigret Park Plan, and other Town Council actions has been the CCA newsletter. We do the best we can, but we don’t have the Town’s resources to send town-wide mailings. Yes, the Town should be sending notices well in advance of votes or meetings, but when they don’t, CCA does our best to get the message out electronically.
June 10, 2024 @ 11:54 am
The town website states: ” 7171 Qualified electors: 6769 active and 402 inactive.” … I assume that these are registered voters …. correct? ………. so the 254 voters are about 3 1/2%