In Wales on Wednesday, the school board voted to cut music, art, physical education, gifted and talented programs, health and Spanish plus activities at Wales Central School to achieve a $202,691 voter-imposed budget cut.

The board also voted not to provide transportation for students attending Oak Hill High School, and it will eliminate extracurricular activities, including sports, yearbook, the school newspaper and the drama club.

In Livermore Falls on Wednesday, voters rejected warrant articles to fund the town’s police department, the public library and the town’s government and administration, including payroll for elected officials, which shut government down. The vote was prompted by anger that selectmen recommended closing the transfer station, requiring folks to haul their trash to Jay.

We absolutely understand the frustration voters feel in trimming their tax bills. But, the Wales board’s dismissal of state-mandated programs and Livermore Falls voters locking down government is no solution.

It doesn’t help taxpayers. It hurts them.

School is about learning, but learning is not restricted to textbooks. Some of the most important, relevant and longest-lasting learning comes from working on the school yearbook, participating in a school play, learning to speak a foreign language, kicking a soccer ball, playing an instrument or painting on canvas.

What is even more problematic for the district, though, is the fact that nearly all the programs board members voted to eliminate are mandated under Maine’s Learning Results. If these programs are not provided by the district, the state has the option of withholding funding. If the town is struggling to pay for school programs now, the solution adopted Wednesday will just make matters worse.

In their effort to save money, taxpayers have gutted their children’s education.

The financial crisis for Wales started at the annual town meeting earlier this month, when voters rejected the proposed school budget and adopted a trimmer $1.8 million budget for the district. That put administrators in the uncomfortable position of identifying cuts, and directors in the equally uncomfortable position of approving those cuts.

Not only have the cuts eliminated whatever cultural and social lessons students at Wales Central School might learn, they have potentially endangered students traveling to Oak Hill High School. If there is no transportation provided by the school district – which it is not mandated to provide – teens will look to each other for rides to school. Working parents don’t share the same schedule as students and it is unreasonable to expect parents to be able to transport their children each day.

So, on icy winter mornings, Wales teens will be piling into private cars and zipping off to high school. On warm spring afternoons, they’ll be piling into cars and zipping away.

It’s a nightmare scenario for parents forced to place the safety of their child in another teen’s car instead of the safety of a school bus driven by a trained professional.

In Livermore Falls, voters’ decision to eliminate town government as of July 1 was done out of anger at selectmen and frustration about losing their transfer station. The result, which certainly disses selectmen, hurts citizens more.

If police aren’t being paid, who will protect public safety after July 1? If there is no money for salaries or administration of the town office, who will collect tax bills, assess properties, monitor building permits and codes, plow roads, issue public assistance and perform all the other necessary duties of government?

Administrators in Wales can and should find cuts that will satisfy taxpayers if they give the process longer than a week.

Selectmen in Livermore Falls can and should find a way to keep the transfer station open, which means convincing taxpayers to foot the bill.

The decisions made in these towns were rash and, in each case, the budget processes may have to be repeated.

Quick cuts in the heat of anger serve no one well.