“We failed our kids,” the recent editorial from The Times, was sobering.

Replacing a football field is a huge expense and it should be shared by the entire community. Some amazing residents were kind enough to donate the funds this time, but will these generous folks be able to cover everything that the schools need? We can’t run a school district by fundraising.

Why did this happen? During the bond election, residents were misled. The town was littered with signs that falsely predicted an enormous tax increase if the bond passed. They also wrongly claimed that there was plenty of money in the current budget. Candidates insisted that they would correct the wasteful spending and run the district efficiently without any extra funding. The misinformation worked. Our residents were pushed to vote against the badly needed bond, and that was not in the best interest of our community.

Likewise, some members of the Town Council campaigned with promises to end wasteful spending and fix the streets with all the extra money. As usual, the reality is much different than the hype. Extra money has not been discovered, and the streets are going to require some sort of special funding. Yet we still have a town to run, a really nice town, and most of the residents like having the amenities that brought them here. The business community profits from having those amenities, too. If we want to maintain our property values and our exceptional image, money must be allocated in the budget. Simply voting “no” on reasonable budget items in order to placate a few people is not in the best interest of this community.