It’s a busy week for meetings. Of note, the Board of Selectmen and Advisory Committee will hold a joint session tonight to hash out their budget differences in advance of next week’s town meeting. Selectmen meet again on Tuesday night to make a decision on how to proceed with the Main Street reconstruction project.
Monday, April 5
- Historical Commission, 5:00 pm @ Historical Museum, 25 Common Street
- Board of Selectmen/Advisory Committee Joint Session, 6:00 pm @ Upper Hall, Cordaville Hall
- Planning Board, 7:00 pm @ Hearing Room, Town House (agenda)
Tuesday, April 6
- Board of Assessors, 8:30 am, Hearing Room, Town House
- Naming Subcommittee of Reg. School Committee, Principal’s Conference Room F108, Alonquin
- Affordable Housing Trust Committee, 6:00 pm @ Hearing Room, Town House
- Board of Selectmen, 6:30 pm @ Hearing Room, Town House (agenda)
- Assabet School Committee, 7:00 pm @ School Committee Conf. Room, Assabet
- Youth Commission, 7:15 pm @ Conference Room, Fayville Village Hall
Wednesday, April 7
- Board of Health, 1:00 pm @ BOH Office, Cordaville Hall
- Scholarship Advisory Committee, 7:00 pm @ Meeting Room, Southborough Library
- Council on Aging, 7:00 pm @ Country Kitchen, Cordaville Hall
- Zoning Advisory Committee, 7:00 pm @ Upper Hall, Cordaville Hall
- Cable Television Committee, 7:30 pm @ Cable Access Office, Fayville Hall
Thursday, April 8
- Conservation Commission, 7:30 pm @ Hearing Room, Town House (agenda)
- Advisory Committee, 7:30 pm @ Upper Hall, Cordaville Hall
Friday, April 9
- No meetings scheduled
I am hoping someone from either the Advisory or the BOS can elaborate on tonight’s meeting. The first part of this meeting is a “Pre-Town Meeting” with the Moderator…..a run thru the reading of the Warrant Articles, then the AB and BOS will have a discussion on all the Town Department budgets. I’m assuming all of this will take place at Cordaville hall and not be recorded for broadcast. If there is a disagreement….for example, school budgets…will the audience be able to ask questions of either Board? My understanding is the BOS would like the K-8 schools to cut another $200,000 and that the Advisory Board would like another $50,000 (which actually is almost another $130,000 with our 41% student base) cut from the Algonquin budget. I would like both boards to address these additional cuts and how it would impact our children’s education. K-8 is already losing 9.55 positions (the only town department to have lay-offs) and with the BOS budget it would certainly mean additional teacher cuts. Also, will members of the School Committees and Dr. Gobron be present as well?
More importantly, I would like to hear the rational about using monies ($494,000??) from the Stabilization fund….BOS does not support it while Advisory Board does.
All residents should educate themselves before next Monday, so they are able to make informed decisions during Town Meeting…..and the Town boards should be able to have open discussions in order to supply as much as that important information.
Eileen
The questions you have all relate to the very difficult budget year we have been experiencing. Out of a budget of about $41,000,000 our non tax revenue is down nearly $2,000,000. A big part of this is loss of revenue sharing from the state but other areas are also down. At the same time Advisory has been trying to limit the impact of a tax increase on hard pressed tax payers. As of March just under 9% of our property tax accounts were delinquent.
1. If you have a question I am quite confident that the Advisory Chair (Claire Reynolds) will recognize you.
2. I believe that the BOS has reduced the size of the cut it wants to make. Advisory supports the K-8 requested amount.
3. Advisory has voted a $50k reduction in the Algonquin request which will mean a $130k total reduction as you point out. There were 2 considerations. First we were not inclined to support any total increase and second we vigorously suggested that the fee structure needed to be addressed and that issues appears to have fallen on deaf ears.
4. I suspect that many town departments will be there I can’t speak for the school committees, they have been absent in the past.
5. Regards the use of stabilization funds. Advisory has extensively investigated whether hoarding money you have already paid in taxes in this fund confers any benefit to taxpayers and we have not found one.
See Post #6 https://mysouthborough.com/2010/03/29/open-discussion-thread-ask-questions-share-opinions-12/
We believe that these funds should be used to reduce taxes this year when a number of residents are having difficulty making ends meet. The use of these funds will permit us to have a tax increase of about 3.4% vs 5.0%. The sum in question very nearly equals the amount of special ed circuit breaker money that the state is refusing to pay us this year which has been paid in the past.
There an excellent piece on the Advisory web site authored by John Butler on this subject. Go to: http://southboroughadvisory.nexo.com/resources and look under FY 2011 Documents “Advisory Consideration of Cash Reserve Questions 2-26-10”. I encourage town meeting members to read this.