Templeton residents will feel the loss after gigantic cuts in town

Templeton residents will feel the loss after gigantic cuts in town

Mark Haranas
Assistant Managing Editor

Starting today, everyone in town will be feeling the effects of the devastating cuts town officials approved last week during an emotional Board of Selectmen meeting.

Residents will notice the town infrastructure lacking due to most of the Highway Department being laid off.

Residents will notice a longer response time when seeking police because the department has to adjust schedules — losing their third shift from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m.

Senior citizens will be lacking special trips, while the Food Pantry will only serve residents one day per week.
Residents hoping to utilize the library will have a limited amount of time due to the library cutting most of their staff and being open now for only 20 hours per week.

It will be harder for residents with health concerns or issues to contact their local Board of Health following their reductions.

“The town will barely operate for the next seven weeks,” said Town Administrator Bob Markel.

As most followers of The Gardner News know, these cuts were not the results of any one person, but rather the outcome of budget mistakes made in the past — accumulating to a $505,000 deficit in Templeton.

And because residents decided they didn’t want their tax rates to go up any more, voters rejected the $505,000 Proposition 2 1/2 tax override at Town Meeting on Tuesday — much to the dismay of town officials.

Officials needed residents to pass the override in order to halt state intervention, which is never a good thing for any community. When the state intervenes in a community, I think of the three ‘R’s.

First — Reexamination.

Second — Restructure.

All leading to — Reductions.

No one wants to be under state control, it just makes everything harder and takes the power away from the people Templeton elected or appointed.

Although formal changes will not take place until the May 17 Special Town Meeting, starting today, all these municipal — local — jobs are lost.

I remember thinking a few years ago when Templeton reduced hours and wages for elected and appointed positions that they were running on bare-bones. Now, it seems that Templeton is running on skeletons, if anything, for the foreseeable future.

THE FUTURE

The silver lining here, is the people in charge now feel that they have finally set sail in the correct direction dealing with budget and local government. The scary part about that conclusion is that we’ve heard it before over the past decade in Templeton.

On several occasions a rearrangement of the Board of Selectmen or a new town coordinator or town accountant had people feeling like Templeton was finally on the right course for recovering after years of budget woes and controversy.

Let’s hope for everyone’s sake, it’s the real thing this time.

One of the most important steps in making a positive, fiscally reliable future for Templeton is selecting the correct town administrator.

I believe if the right person is selected, the town can begin to heal and patch up its wounds over the next two years of budget problems. A town coordinator position in Templeton seemed to just not have enough authority.

This new administrator position is the key to start fixing the fiscal problems that has plagued the community for years.

The four final candidates for the position each have extensive experience in municipal government, let’s hope the right one is chosen.

One things for sure, if anyone sees Bob Markel walking down the street, they should buy him a cup of coffee — or better yet, after the past several months of budget problems, a beer.