The emperor has no clothes!

Our Select Board chair and some members have been touting the fact that the DOR recommendations have been adopted and that a plan is in place. Either they have not read the DOR report or they are spinning the facts. They have not implemented the very first and definitely the most important of the DOR recommendations. The top recommendation was to have a plan.
WE DO NOT HAVE A PLAN.
Just last night I attended the Finance Committee meeting where the DPW presented their FY09 budget. The budget presented was what the DPW called their "needs" budget. So what's wrong with that? Well, we do not have the money to fund their "needs" budget, override or no override. Obviously our town administrators have been working away on budgets and plans that have no basis in financial reality. As we saw with the Police Chief a few weeks ago, the department heads have not been told what our shortfall will be and what portion of that shortfall will be apportioned to their department. It is not that the information is not available or widely know. Nonetheless, our town employees are busily working away to prepare budgets that have no basis in fact. That is a failure in leadership of monumental proportion. Our administrators are not working on alternatives to manage the available revenue or innovative ways of doing more with the same resources, they are working on fiction.
Here is the recommendation of the DOR (I'll reproduce it in part here rather than just link to it because I think it important that everyone see this)

A town-wide financial plan is the integration of multi-year revenue projections, adopted polices (such as reserve policies), and analyses of organizational goals and their long-term impact on expenditures. The purpose of this plan is to call attention to the community’s fiscal condition and the alternatives available to manage it. Whatever form such a plan takes, it should contain the following core elements:
1. Multi-year outlook (3-5 fiscal years)
2. Inventory of revenue sources and projected increases/decreases
3. Expenditure projections that reflect labor, expenses and planned service levels
4. Impact of financial goals/policies are assigned a specific dollar value
5. Integration of infrastructure investment based on approved capital plan
6. Current-year revenue and expenditure monitoring
7. Presentation format that facilitates meaningful communication to the public
Since there appears to be consensus among policy makers and administration that a financial plan should be developed, the next step is to establish exactly what such a plan would look like. The select board, as the chief executive board for the town, should convene a working group whose membership should include, but not be limited to, the executive administrator, director of budget and finance and representation from the finance, capital planning and school committees. The group’s charge should be to develop recommendations regarding the content of the plan for the select board’s consideration. Financial planning is key to the management of available resources and the funding demands of current and anticipated services. However, be forewarned, formulating a financial plan will not provide an infusion of cash to resolve current budgetary woes. Rather, it is a mechanism to help stabilize town finances moving forward. BOLD EMPHASIS MINE

This course of action, this plan if you will, clearly spelled out last July by the DOR, has not been implemented. Stating that it has is not truthful. I have attended enough Select Board and Finance Committee meetings and talked to enough department heads to tell you unequivocally the core elements as laid out by the DOR have not been implemented and in most aspects do not exist. I have heard enough nonsense and I will not stand by and pretend. The emperor has no clothes!