Paying to defeat the budget he was there to help create

Three referendums in one spring, and before each one, a letter in every mailbox in town urging a NO vote. Signed, and paid for, under his own name. The office he holds appears on none of them.

In the spring of 2026 the elementary school’s budget went to the voters three times. On May 5 it went inside the town budget, as a single question, and the question failed, 451 to 331 ^[1]. The budgets were then split, the way Andover splits them after a defeat, and on May 26 the voters passed the town’s side and rejected the school’s, 431 to 343 ^[2]. On June 16 the school’s budget came back a third time, reduced to a six percent increase, and it passed, 420 to 317 ^[3].

Before each of those votes, a letter arrived in every mailbox in Andover.

The three letters are a set: one page, addressed to “Andover Taxpayers,” mailed to every postal patron in town under a bulk-mail permit, each closing with a call to vote NO on the date of the coming referendum ^[4]^[5]^[6]. The first takes up the preschool: whether taxpayers subsidize it, how many of its students come from out of town, whether the tuition covers the cost ^[4]. The second sets the proposed budget against the last audited year and works the increase into a figure per additional student ^[5]. The third recites the two defeats and argues that annual increases of six percent or more are not sustainable ^[6].

Say the fair things first, because they are real. Any resident may argue against a budget, in public, at his own expense, and a town where budget proposals draw written argument is healthier than one where they pass in silence. These letters are not anonymous and they are not hidden money. His name is signed at the bottom of each one and printed again beneath it: “Paid For by Jeffery J Maguire” ^[6]. The numbers in them are drawn from public documents. And the third letter says plainly, in his words, that voting NO “is not a vote against education” ^[6].

Now the other thing.

The signature reads Jeffrey J Maguire. Nowhere on any of the three letters do the words “First Selectman” appear. The second letter introduces its writer at length: twenty-five years in Andover, a degree in accounting, a CPA, a wife who taught public school for twenty-four years and served on the school board, children through the local schools ^[5]. It is a full accounting of who he is, except for the one thing every reader of a town budget mailer might most want to know: that he is the town’s chief elected official, and that the budget he is asking them to defeat is one his own office spends the rest of the year administering.

He was not a bystander to this budget who happened to have a stamp. And the letters themselves say the position is settled and standing. I voted NO last year, the second one says, and intend to vote NO again this year ^[5].

Then there is the calendar. The first letter arrived in early May, days before that vote. The second arrived on May 20, six days before the May 26 vote ^[5]. The third arrived on June 12, four days before the June 16 vote ^[6]. Each one landed close to the day of the vote it argued against.

None of this was against the rules. That is worth saying twice, because it is true, and because it is the point. A private resident may send three letters before three votes and sign them with his name. These letters are signed with his name.

What they never say is what he is.

Paying to defeat the budget he was there to help create

Sources