OVERRIDE FAILS BALLOT

OVERRIDE FAILS BALLOT

State Intervention Imminent
Eryn Dion
News Staff Writer

TEMPLETON— A Proposition 2 1/2 override to close the $505,000 budget shortfall failed to pass the ballot after Monday’s election, leaving the town’s finances crippled and state intervention inevitable.

Residents and town officials shook their heads in disbelief as Town Clerk Carol Harris read that the override necessary to keep the state at bay failed by over 100 votes.

“I don’t know what to say,” said Selectmen Diane Haley Brooks. “I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

Ms. Brooks won her bid for re-election as former-School Committee member John Columbus took the second open Selectmen’s seat, but after the results were read neither was in the mood to celebrate.


“What’s going to happen?” Ms. Brooks asked. “What is our role going to be?”

For several months Town administrator Bob Markel, as well as other members of the Board of Selectmen, have been in contact with the state’s Department of Revenue, who have been threatening receivership should the town fail to close the half-million dollar deficit. During the last board meeting Mr. Markel revealed the department had already drafted legislation to allow the town to operate in a deficit. Once it passes the legislature, the town will be put in a financial “straightjacket” for five years while they work to pay back the state’s loan.

While it is unlikely that the DOR will send a control board to oversee the operations of the town, the legislation does mention a director who will need to approve all municipal spending.

In other cities, the state department has dramatically reduced and restructured the town government and public safety departments and officials say the schools will see their budgets examined and trimmed as well.

Templeton is the first town in Massachusetts to undergo receivership, although three cities have previously undergone the process.

Chelsea became the first Massachusetts city since the Great Depression to be placed under state control in 1991 with the appointment of a receiver to control the government until 1995.

In 2003 the city of Springfield, facing extrordinary financial difficulty, was placed under the direction of a state-appointed Finance Control Board until 2009 and in 2011 the city of Lawrence saw their public schools fall under receivership by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

The Board of Selectment had previously scheduled a meeting for Tuesday night to set the town’s tax rate, however, without a balanced budget the rate for Fiscal Year 2014 cannot be set.

Incumbent Dana Blais kept his seat on the Light and Water Commission while Henry Mason and A.J. Robinson took the two School Committee seats up for election.

A debt exclusion to fund the schematic and design phase of a new elementary school also narrowly passed at the ballot along with a measure to consolidate the town’s Treasurer and Tax Collector offices into a single combined Treasurer/Collector position.