I applaud David Collins for asking, “Should Selectman/Senator Osten get a 6 percent raise?” (April 10). But it’s a moot question, as it is already baked into a budget that will pass without any discussion or debate by Sprague taxpayers allowed. 

Osten and the finance chair essentially write the Sprague budget. This is because, first, a built-in partisan board majority lets them; second, while Sprague supposedly has a town meeting form of government, no annual budget meeting has been held since Osten became first selectwoman in 2007. Every year since, Osten and Pellegrino arrange, through party-line votes, to skip this pesky democratic process and go directly to a referendum that denies town residents any opportunity to amend the budget.

The Osten-Pellegrino tag team has quashed all efforts to restore a real town budget meeting, without local media taking notice. Residents no longer even notice that their role in the budget is reduced to nothing but a rubber stamp. In a pre-Osten budget era, a resident could offer to cut Osten’s 6 percent raise at the annual town budget meeting. Residents could then debate and decide the issue democratically. But because democracy has been extinguished in Sprague, this unfortunately won’t happen.

Kevin Generous

Sprague