Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Of Charters and City Councils

Easton voters approved changes to the city's charter yesterday, implementing home rule, diversifying its taxing powers and expanding the city council to seven seats while making the mayor president of the council. I'm a little surprised at how few people voted on the issue, given how important it was: 2,289 vs 3,643 for the mayoral race.

Democrat Sal Panto was elected mayor again, and brought with him a string of Democratic councilmen and women.

The big question now is ... where do we go from here? The city's got serious financial problems, which is why I voted for the charter yesterday -- relying entirely on real estate taxes to fund government services clearly isn't working. But what kind of Democrats got elected yesterday? The fiscally responsible kind that will use their new tax powers wisely, or the tax-and-spend kind that will spawn a few dozen pet projects that will dig the city deeper into the hole?

Based on what I've read, I'm hoping for the former, but we'll just have to wait and see.

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