In 21 days voters in the Auburn Enlarged City School District are being asked to go back to the polls to vote on the same budget they narrowly rejected last week.

The were also going to be asked - nine days later - to go to the polls to vote on the $15 million spending referendum that included the issue of turf. Having voters go to the polls three times within 38 days is a major request, even in a democracy. As a result it should be no surprise that the board decided last night to pull the building referendum and focus on getting their operating budget passed.

We all know at least four people (enough to change the outcome of last Tuesday's vote) who claim that they would have supported the budget, but did not go to the polls for a variety of reasons - they thought their vote wasn't needed or they forgot to go or they were just plain lazy.

Up until Tuesday night, what was in question was whether supporters of the budget could get their voters out - the conventional wisdom was that it would be easier to get voters to the polls for the first vote, over the second. That was going to make the district's work all the harder.

While the board may have had plans for a “pro-referendum” get-out-the-vote effort for June 26th (a Thursday by the way, not a Tuesday, as voters are accustomed) those plans were washed away with last week's budget defeat. New efforts would be needed by district officials to make sure that their budget proposal is passed.

What is not clear is why district officials didn't have a contingency plan to have both the referendum and a re-vote on a possibly defeated budget on the same day, the 17th, which they contend is the schedule set by the state for re-voting.

Maybe they never imagined the unimaginable, but they should have - especially with the negative sentiment that has been raised over the last several months on the “turf” portion of the referendum. By at least planning for the contingency that they would have to put their budget back up for a re-vote if it was defeated, it would be easier to get what can loosely coined “pro-district” supporters out to the polls once in big numbers to support both a resubmitted budget and a building referendum, versus making them go out to the polls twice. It is usually much more of an effort for those who support or are likely to support a measure to get out and vote, compared to those who oppose measures. The district clearly figured this out before Tuesday night.

Cosentino is a former mayor of Auburn and can be contacted at cozguytho@aol.com