Hopefully it won’t come as any surprise to you that tonight is Southborough’s annual town meeting. Several of the town boards, including the selectmen and the Advisory Committee, will meet just before town meeting to iron out any remaining details.
For the rest of us, town meeting starts at 7:00 pm at the auditorium at Trottier. You can get a copy of the warrant at town meeting, but online copies are also available. Hope to see you all tonight.
Monday, April 11
- Advisory Committee, 6:00 pm @ Room 224, Trottier Middle School (agenda)
- Board of Selectmen, 6:00 pm @ Room 190, Trottier Middle School (agenda)
- Planning Board, 6:30 pm @ Room 192, Trottier Middle School (agenda)
- Personnel Board, 6:30 pm @ Room 101, Trottier Middle School (agenda)
- Southborough School Committee, 6:30 pm @ Room 139, Trottier Middle School (agenda)
- ANNUAL TOWN MEETING, 7:00 pm @ Auditorium, Trottier Middle School
Tuesday, April 12
- Board of Assessors, 8:30 am @ Hearing Room, Town House (agenda)
- Board of Selectmen, 6:30 pm @ Room 190, Trottier Middle School (agenda)
- Planning Board, 6:30 pm @ Room 192, Trottier Middle School (agenda)
- ANNUAL TOWN MEETING (Day 2 if needed), 7:30 pm @ Auditorium, Trottier Middle School
Wednesday, April 13
- Woodward School Council, 3:15 pm @ Office Conference Room, Woodward (agenda)
Thursday, April 14
- Board of Selectmen, 6:30 pm @ Room 190 (Conference Room), Trottier Middle School (agenda)
- ANNUAL TOWN MEETING (Day 3 if needed), 7:30 pm @ Auditorium, Trottier Middle School
- Conservation Commission, 7:30 pm @ Hearing Room, Town House (agenda)
- Green Technology and Recycling Committee, 7:30 pm @ Conference Room, DPW Building (agenda)
Friday, April 15
- No meetings scheduled
I was looking at the warrent for tonights meeing and had a few questions someone might know quickly.
1. What are our elected select people paid? I thought it was really close to nothing? I just did not understand the huge line item for Personnel Services of roughly $275,000.
2. Why are Council on the Aging, Recreation Department Heads and some others paid so much. As well as Director of Armered Serviced $10,000 a year. I’m a vet and if they want to voluteer great but they should not get paid. And with all due respect a library director making $90K+ a year. Please, for stocking the shelves and managing the library? Take a look at the pay scales. $65-100K for a government worker? All of the above were volunteer services years ago. Do we really need them?
2. Why are our town employees paid 15 holidays a year, 15 sick days a year, and what I think is nromal 3 personal days? That is out of line with the private sector.
3. Look a the first page of the Warrent. Do you notice four line items that involve UNIONS? I am for our fire, police and (some) teachers but do you see the message? UNIONS get raises, the rest of us don’t. I think we can do without the unions and negotiate directly with the teachers, police and firefighters.
There are 50 highly educated, positive attitudes, with great life skill sets, who would be glad to step in and teach in case of strike teacher strike. And is several cases do a better job than many of the teachers. And please don’t use that old, tired, wrn out, “professional teacher” argument. We have 20 subs available now in the system who do a fine job for $15 and hour. 20% of the teachers do a really good job. The other 80% are negotiable. And you know what? I was a “special needs” person 30 years ago in a group class room that turned out pretty good. I don’t see that happening in schools today.
I say we negotiate directly with the police, firefighters and teachers and damn the unions. They only protect the not so good and take form the better teachers, police and firefights. If I were a teacher, police person, firefighter I would not want the underperforming co-worker being protected and taking from my higher earnings potential because the union will not allow them to be fired.
At first I thought you brought up some very good points…..glad to see some residents actually reading documents before hand! And even some of your comments about unions I can agree with. I think our teachers would come up with a better, town friendly contract if it wasn’t for the Mass Teachers Association. Hopefully, some sort of a ‘merit pay system’ will happen.
But then I read your comments about OUR teachers….and I don’t know where to begin! I think you need to spend the day in some our schools….and I mean a whole day following our dedicated teachers! Your choice Pre-K thru to the high school….you are absolutely insulting thinking our teachers are not ‘professional’! 80% ‘negotiable’….do you even have some one in our school system to see what the ‘product’ of their work. Can you even define ‘differential teaching’? If not, don’t bother showing up to teach our children. I would even recommend having a meeting with any of our school principals and they can give you ‘evidence’ you need about our teachers.
You think you could find 50 ‘educated professionals’ to teach….sorry the schools have enough trouble finding volunteers to help for fundraising and chaperoning field trips…since parents are working for their own pay checks and realize teaching is a difficult, time consuming, and better left to the trained professional. And I would prefer something better than ‘fine’ teaching my child on a 504 plan. (BTW…do you even know what that is??)
Keep the good questions coming…..it’s the only way things are going to change…but keep the insults about our teachers to a minimum.
To set the record straight:
Library Director Jane Cain’s current salary is $58,893; she did not receive a raise in FY 11. She holds a Master’s Degree in Library and Information Science from Simmons College. Her primary duties include managing a staff of eleven full and part time employees, efficiently and economically shepherding the library’s budget, and overseeing all purchasing to insure that our educational supplies are equitably divided by age group and format. Director Cain also directs the library’s long and short range plan for technology, programming, and other library services. She represents our town library in discussions with the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners, with CWMARS, with Southborough town officials, and with the many, many patrons who daily come to her with questions and comments. She has developed and currently runs several very popular adult discussion groups; these include those on genealogy and books to movies. She organizes and assists with reading groups. Last year, she spearheaded the library’s first month-long poetry series; this year’s series is even bigger and better. It’s going on now!
If you’d like to hear more, Director Cain would love to meet you at the library, which is open 54 hours a week. She can be found in the building at least 60 hours a week, so please come and say hello.
Judy Budz, Chairperson, Library Board of Trustees
Nice, professional, polite reply! Sounds like Jane Cain does a lot more work and managing than some of the directors who I work with in the private sector. And they make at least twice as much as she does.
Too bad Jane misled the taxpayers last year at town meeting and that very day got a large grant and STILL asked for a budget increase and cried poor. She should be ashamed of herself.
The recreation tax based budget consists of only 2 salaries. The Director position at $56,370gross and Program Coordinator at $45,597, an additional third salary is covered with program fees. The recreation department also generates revenue that offsets our tax based budget, in FY09-$288,694, FY10-$322,117, FY11-$304,200(forcasted). The department consists of 3 personnel who are all Southborough residents. As tax payers ourselves we are very aware of the crisis the Town faces and for this reason we agreed, as well as all other SAP (Town salary administration plan employees, approx 20 employees) to a no cost of living increase for FY11. Recreation works very hard to provide quality services AND offset the tax burden as much as possible.
On a personal note, although I have accepted a reduction in pay and benefits from my private sector job, I find this job more enjoyable and rewarding as we, the Recreation team(Doreen, Paula and Jenn) are able to provide exceptional services at minimal cost to the Town.
Mom in Town, Keep it on the same page. I have children in the school system. And there in lies the problem with the modern day school system. All the fancy terminology you badgered us with (and to answer your comment I do know the terms you tried to implicate). No need to get upitty on anyone because some folks do or do not volunteer. Our precious little kiddies will still do just fine without overbearing over manged parents I think. If it is a burden dont do it. And I was reffering to 50 professinals that are “out of work” who would be glad to teach to cover a potential and please note “unioin” strike. Notice I did not say “teacher” strike so as not to pick on the teachers. Althought there are a good 30-40% who could be labeled margianl in performance and replaced with higher energy and more competent teachers in my opinion only.