Well unless you have been living under a rock, you are all aware that $551,000 needs to taken from the Town Budget and given to the Narragansett school district. The School Committee will be certifying their budget amount at their next meeting on Wednesday August 28th.
So here we are with a $551,000 short fall in the town budget.
Option 1 - Cut Police, Highway, Fire. Let's face it people we cannot cut. To lose Police, Fire, Highway etc. would have serious consequences to our town.
Option 2, -close the town down completely for 8 to 10 weeks at the end of the fiscal year. No Police, Highway, Fire, Cemetery, Town Clerk, Tax Collector, Assessors, Building Department, COA, Library, etc etc. Need a building permit - sorry wait until July 1, need a dog license - sorry wait until July 1. your house burns down - wait until July 1. You get it, this is serious.
One thing I do want to mention here with option 1 and 2 is employee will be laid off. Some bloggers have made jokes about laying employees off - NOT FUNNY - for anyone who is not aware unemployment only pays 60% of ones wages, so these employees' income would go down 40 %. Could you afford to lose 40% of your income? Also they lose their medical insurance. oh yeah they can apply for MassHealth, but do you know how long that takes? And many doctors don't take it, so if you have an employee or a member of their family going through any medical issue - this could create a real problem for them.
Option 3 - go for an override. Yes this is going to be hard on some people, elderly on fixed incomes, people already teetering on foreclosure. Can you afford $20. a month? Can you afford $1.00 a day for a bigger override to get our town back on it's feet? We all heard the school people's comments justifying the salaries of people who work for the school dept. but no one seems to care that the town employees are some of the lowest paid people not only in town but in the state. We have laborers (and I'm not knocking anyone here) at Narragansett that make $10,000 more per year than our Town Clerk, Tax Collector, COA Director, etc. Someone stated that the school has regulations and laws to abide by. And the town doesn't! have you seen the size of the "Massachusetts General Law book on Municipal Law and Finance" Have you checked with the Board of Health lately on all their laws and regulations. Did you know they get called in when DSS investigates families in town. and yet these employees stay and are dedicated to the town, many of them have been here,10, 20, and even over 30 years!
We have one of the lowest tax rates in the area.
So here you have it. How will you vote? Did you support the school? Will you now support the town?
Thank you - a Town and School Supporter!
Nothing about this situation is the least bit funny. I knew it from the start. It is really important to understand one thing. We would have needed a override sooner or later. Our town could not go on paying people no money forever. So Our plan has been altered, we need to get over it, and save our town from being unable to function. The meeting we had over a year ago cut the budget to the bone. I am not lying to you, I have to live in this town to. Skelton balanced the budget by using all of our Stabilization Account money, that is why our tax rate never went up. That was not a smart thing to do, but it did make him look good, yah, thanks a heap. I hope people will understand all this before we vote. Bev.
ReplyDeleteDidn't we the voters make the final determination of wiping out the stabilization account? Wasn't it our responsibility to ask questions and determine if we the people were getting the right answers? I know you stand up and speak to the voting body and so does Paul Q and Sharon Manty and Dan Keeney, my father and many others to help ensure the voting body understands what is being voted on and why and how and what the impact is... and then we vote. This past annual town meeting we brought our stabilization to zero... oh my goodness was all I kept saying and how do we keep cutting our way out of the bottom? Well, if it's the people that show up that are making all the decisions then I guess according to many things I read, we made some poor choices? Maybe it's because we had to and now it's time to stop that and figure out how to build it, not cut it. We need more business here and we need to make it so much easier. What Kenn Robinson has proposed for an open letter is GREAT and we as citizens should look for opportunity to talk to people and see if they are looking for a place to open up shop. We also need to start coming together more and losing the constant negativeness as we are a community that is looked upon as not such a great place to move to any longer. I hear it a lot as a real estate agent and it deeply saddens me. Please feel free to correct me if I am wrong about something I have written here because I know I voted for some things and not for others. The BOS are our leaders and we look to them for guidance and direction and we each can have our own opinions about who's great, who's not so great, who doesn't do their job, who does etc. I really want to stop looking backward except to learn lessons and let's just keep moving forward to a better community for all.
ReplyDeleteIt does not matter what you want to call it, the money the town put away for a rainy day, is gone. A BOS is only as good as the people who are on it, and the people who ran interference for them. What the people in the Town of Templeton are dealing with now, is the result of ten years of bad management. There is no way we can wipe the slate clean and not look back. Every financial move the town makes now or tomorrow has to deal with the money mismanagement of those ten years. I was not here at that time. I was in Leominster running a business with my husband. I did not sell my house, and planned to come back. I thought at that time, with Gladys gone, it was time to let someone else do the job. I never realized the mess I would find when I got home. We now have to deal with a town with no money. The money Phillipston has, we should have, is gone. We have debt, some of it is justified, some of it questionable, but the way it was borrowed has hurt the town. Some of these loans can not be changed. The ones that could, we changed to reduce the interest. We will pay for 252 for a number of years. We paid too much for a piece of crap, but we own it. So we, and I am talking about the C4T members, have been working to fix what we could and survive the best way we could for a town. We had to do a major financial clean up, but we will never recover the money that was wasted. As for trying to get new business into town, the Planning Board has worked hard on this issue for a number of years. The very things you tout as good Ideas have been in place, and plans were in place to "MAKE TEMPLETON A GOOD PLACE TO LIVE". The plan to help the town's financial condition was improving. We have a super Town Coordinator, and a Fire Chief that has implemented plans to bring money into town. As for the past, the money we owe will be a factor for a long time, and as long as Echo Hill and his followers continue to sit back, I will never let my guard down. I love my town too much. Bev.
DeleteYou should not let your guard down and neither should I. We have different things we are passionate about, but Bev in the end we live in our town and love the town and it's citizens. I support local business for myself and for my FB and website followers. I post things to get the word out to help others. I have been involved in many things and maybe not enough of others, but I am running my own business, have a family of 5 and kids still in school and I volunteer for many things so it's really hard to keep up with it all. We are in this together and we may sit on opposite sides of the fence for the school, but in the whole scheme of things it is a part of our town and our children are our future. Our seniors are our wisdom and our past and they also deserve the great life here. I voted for the senior center instead of other things on the table as they need it ~ but in all reality WE need it. We need to be there helping out and respect what their needs are too. I am a real estate agent and I hear all to often "Templeton, you're in the news too much" "it's unstable and seems like a lot of fighting" and these past several months people have changed their mind with me about buying in my hometown because they thought the school was not going to get their funds and they wanted better for their kids. Well, that affects MY livelihood. I don't want to argue, I want solutions to the challenges and we can sit on another side of the table and agree that we each have different passions and down the road we will all come together for a better Templeton to live in. I respect all you have done to bring so many wrongdoings to light and get the word out there about the L&W and the past leaders that may not have done such a great job, but I want to not hear about that any more it's negative and it's hard to keep focused on the positive. Let's make Templeton a great place for people to TALK about too from here forward. Thank you Bev for always voicing your concerns and being on top of things.
ReplyDeleteDiane, you are so close to being “spot on” with your comments. I must disagree with you want to put on blinders to the past though. It is hard to focus on the positive when so much negative has happened to this town by the hand of others still lurking at some meetings. I will bet you that what former selectman Columbus wants to put on the BOS agenda is anything except positive and helping move forward. I could be wrong but time will tell.
DeleteAs a realtor, can you please tell me why the old American Tissue building and property just outside the center of Baldwinville has been vacant since the day I moved into town? Boy wouldn’t that make a great spot for something positive.
Could it be that the doings of the old guard let their buddy from Erving Paper Mills walk off "scott free" with MILLIONS of the town’s money owed to them? Is that not one of the subjects of the investigation by the AG that just charged former selectman O’Brien $1,000 for violating the law, and in my mind making the purchase of 252 questionable and maybe not legally binding?
There are history lessons at Gansett for a reason. Sometimes we need to make those from the past be held accountable for their actions. It is why there are jails. So I am all for being positive and trying to move forward but not at the expense of the town by letting those that maliciously led us astray and lined their own pockets fade into the past.
Phil Meehan, Thank you. Bev.
DeletePhil Meehan, Thank you. Bev.
DeletePhil, positive is my way and I won't change that. It's not blinders as much as I keep some of those things to myself and not for here on the blog. I do see what has gone on and I don't want to speak out of turn and not be right as I have already done that here about the E&D so I must say thanks for more history lesson. I believe the wheels of justice are spinning for some of that based on things I have heard and what was voted so I am moving on to other things. Like I said I appreciate what Bev and others have done to move those things forward.
ReplyDeleteOh I will research the American Tissue and the the property just outside of Baldwinville Center? Are you talking Temple Stuart? I have heard that building has some tie up to it with the owners. I will research that also. In order to make these buildings of some use we need capital and investors of which we do not have either it seems. A few of us have tried to come up with a place in town for teens to go and just be without hanging around town, but alas it's funds, time and investment and I have not found any of them.
ReplyDeleteThose buildings are still in the owners names and American Tissue owner is in jail and the taxes have not been paid, but alas there is not much that can be done at this time. The Temple Stuart building is also still in the owners names and unsure if taxes are paid or not. Are they still doing cleanup down there? You could contact the tax collector for that information. At this time there is not much that could be done with those.
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