Templeton: Time to stop blaming and start doing
To The Editor: 1/31/2014Virginia Wilder
Templeton
To The Editor:
A recent Letter To The Editor that appeared in The Gardner News on Jan. 15 threw blame all over the place for the current financial problems that the town is having.
I wouldn’t have bothered writing here at this time except the article used names, amongst which appeared mine. I can understand that, if I had failed the public the way the current Board of Selectmen appears to be doing, I would try to explain it anyway I could. You can throw around blame all you want, but the fact is that all of this is happening on the board’s watch. This money is not missing from past budgets it is missing now.
The first debacle was the need for having an override. The need for the override should never have been attributed to the need to fund the school. It should have been advertised as an override to appropriately fund the town budget obligations.
I have heard members of our own Board of Selectmen (BOS) say that the School Department was to blame for the financial problems in the town. Some members of our BOS made every effort to try to prevent the school department from getting the budget they needed to perform at a level that is conducive to good education for our children.
I sat at a meeting where the question was asked about where all of this money would go, and the answer was that the money would cover the obligations voted on by the public for the school department and would reinstate hours that were lost by some employees in the prior budget season.
Based on that information, I voted for the override to keep town employees from losing their jobs.
The override passed and then I found out that $250,000 from that override was put into the stabilization fund. While I would always agree that it is good to have money in stabilization, I do not appreciate being lied to about where it is going to come from.
I would not have voted to have my taxes raised had I known that the intention was to stash money away in a savings account. I have none in mine!
So they got the override money and everything should have been resolved, then suddenly right on the heels of the override vote, comes an announcement that we are now missing over a half million dollars.
It would appear that a recent report put out by Moodys is correct. A few months back, when we were notified that the town’s bond rating had been lowered Moodys report noted that the reason behind this action was because the current administration in our town did not have a clear working knowledge of finances.
It seems to me that its time to stop trying to find someone to blame it on and start taking care of business. There has been little to no talk about how to resolve the problem.
Meanwhile every day that goes by that you don’t do something to resolve the problem, it gets us deeper and deeper in the hole.
You can dislike all you want, the way the budgets were funded in the past, but they were funded legally. And they were funded without layoffs or anyone losing their jobs or losing time.
This entire missing money problem is happening now under your watch. I can understand why you would be trying to blame everyone you can conger up for your problem.
Also, I believe that everyone should clearly understand the meaning of the letter received by the town in response to their own request.
The BOS sent a letter to the Department of Revenue requesting an official interpretation of the Acts of 2000. This is the name of the legal Legislative Act that created the combining of the Light and Water Companies.
The BOS was under the misinterpretation that this act allowed the water company to operate under the direction of the Light Department, but they felt the Water Department still had to operate under 44_E — which is what most other enterprise funds operate under.
What the real deal is, the Act allows them to operate under the direction of the light department but also under Chapter 164, which are the rules and regulations and allowances designed for light departments.
This letter from the department of revenue clearly states that the water department is operating legally under the same statute as the light department and that the BOS does not have any control over their budget.
I would hope that this letter will put to rest all of the harassment of the Light and Water Company, so that everyone can move on.
To sum all of this up; mistakes have been made and it happens. Own up to them and resolve the problem. Stop trying to blame everyone else.
It has been nearly two years now since most of the people the Jan. 15 Letter To The Editor spoke about in his article have been involved with the towns government. Take responsibility for it and move on.
There are many pressing issues in Templeton that could use some of the energy that has been put into efforts to destroy people’s characters.
One of our newest Selectman made a promise to act on efforts to attract new business in our town. This would be such a positive move. The townspeople would really love to see some productive positive activity coming from the whole board.
If you feel that past practices of budgeting for the town were wrong, your opinion is noted … over and over again. Perhaps we should start putting more effort into resolving and less to blaming.
The longer we continue to operate with such a deficit, without taking some action, the deeper in debt we go.
Virginia Wilder
Templeton
It is strange that Ms. Wilder's vision has improved since she was on the board. The way the budget was mangled by previous boards had a great deal to do with the problems that took place trying to go to a new computer system. It is true that I knew if the schools went after the money the town needed it would cause some real problems and it did. Virginia is very wrong about money going to Stabilization from the money that was voted during the override. No money was used for anything other than the reason given to the residents, and those were to replace hours and money lost as a result of the override. In my opinion putting the water department with the Light Company was a huge mistake. The original idea was to help the sewer with billing, which is a laugh because the Light Company has no desire to help anyone but their selves. Our town has been trying to run with out the income that it needs for the last thirteen years. The Water Department is costing the residents more and more every year, just to pay the Mr. Driscoll and his crew, and it is not going to get any better. anytime soon. At the last Water Department meeting Mr. Driscoll was very pleased that the increase the people were handed, now made the department on stable footing. How many of these increases people are going to take with out standing up for them selves, is beyond me. Our Water Department pays more people to run the department than any other water department in our area, and that is a fact. Bev.
ReplyDeleteI wrote this a couple of days ago and you know, it still bothers me very much that Ms. Wilder could go to the Gardner News and have them publish things that are not true. I could call them facts, but they are not true so how could they be called facts ? Tom J thinks that we are picking on the Light and Water Department ? That is ok, because he does not have a clear picture of what these guys have been cooking up since they have gotten their hooks into the only town business that made any money for the town, that being the Light Company. Dana and company had it made in the shade because for the past thirteen years or so they ran the Light company without anyone checking to see what they were doing. Again blind faith has us in the position we are in right now. As I have said before, this is not your grandfather's light company. It seems ironic that Ms. Wilder thinks that the money that was voted for the replacement of wages lost when the town had to cut back on workers hours went into the stabilization account. Could it be she is getting poor information from the person she and Mr. Columbus, Mr. Stewart and Mr.O'Brien put into the treasurer's position ? The fact that these people can get anything they want published, true or not is the reason Pauly's blog was started in the beginning, and it is the very reason it is still relevant today. It will all come in the wash, but it would help if the Gardner News made a attempt to make sure what they printed was true. Bev.
DeleteIts a letter to the editor, not a news story. One can write whatever they want in the letter. True or not, it has no bearing on the paper. It is one persons opinion.
DeleteHuff, for the most part it is an opinion piece, how ever, when Virginia makes a statement about how $250,000.00 was put into stabilization and she states she was lied to, well, that is not opinion and she should have to provide information on where or how she came to that information and provide that to TGN before that part of her letter is published. I have been asked to provide such information to back up things in many letters. Also Virginia should look back as to who was on the BOS when the FY14 budget was put together, when the projections were presented, pre-town meeting, in fact Virginia was on the board during this time so perhaps she should take some credit for this miss-step. I have already stated that if anyone wishes to point a finger, they can point it to me. The current BOs acknowledged there was a mistake made and how that mistake was made and not one of us has run away and or resigned. So huff, while it may be mostly an opinion piece, there are a couple points that are more statements and should require proof. I never said it was illegal to use certified free cash, I said it was not financially responsible. As you Huff have wrote on here before, the tax rate in FY13 the same or close to what it was 10 years ago is not good when all other costs have gone up including the schools. So huff, the next time you see something on the blog that you don't like, remember it is only an opinion and has no real bearing on the blog.
ReplyDeleteAgreed Jeff. They are both just op-ed pieces. Although I didn't realize TGN would require proof.
Delete& trust me, I don't agree with Virginia, just pointing out it was a LTE.