The Finance Committee went over a few of the articles for the Fall Town Meeting at their meeting on Thursday. I will post all the articles under consideration in a future post.
One of the articles being proposed provides $10,000 for continuing education for town employees. The genesis of this article is with the Select Board's discussion of non union employee merit pay increases. One facet of that merit increase would be that each employee ...
... would identify and commit to some sort of continuing education goal each year. It was pointed out that there are no funds budgeted to pay for the courses. This article provides a funding source.
Another proposed article asks for $10,000 to update and continue training of town personnel in emergency preparedness. Some employees have received training and certification from the federal government but have not kept up or continued that certification because the training has not been funded. This article would provide those funds.
A third article would provide $10,000 for emergency relief to senior citizens who run out of heating oil. The monies would be administered by the COA Board and Director. They would be allowed to provide a small amount of oil to elderly residents if they ran out. This is not a fuel subsidy program but an emergency measure. The person receiving the oil would then be assisted in enrolling in a subsidized program but would have received a few days of heat to tide them over until the subsidy program took effect.
Another article that was mentioned was an appropriation of $300K or more to fund the elementary level core reading program acquisition by the school department. I have posted about that here.
I think that all proposed articles that I just mentioned run counter to the recommendation of the state Department of Revenue (DOR) review and the adopted policies of the Finance Committee and Select Board not to use non recurring revenue for recurring expenditures. As adopted by the Finance Committee the policy states:One‐time revenues should only be applied to:
What's your take on these articles? Let's discuss it in comments below.
Capital improvements,
Property acquisitions,
Contributions to the stabilization fund
Single year casualties
Departmental turn‐backs available in the fall town meeting should be
deposited in the stabilization fund or applied to single year payments of capital
improvements. These purchases should not take on debt schedules that require
future appropriations beyond what can be funded from the recurring revenue stream.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Fall Town Meeting articles
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11 comments:
The so called emergency heating for the elderly is absurd, free oil anyone. we don't even know what the oil prices will be. How about free oil for young struggling twenty and thirty somnethings too, Please.
That is a small and reasonable sum to give seniors in need. i also would support a similar or higher amount for low income families.
Who determines need, how poor do you have to be to get oil. Now if you show some kind of statement to show you really are poor and not an elderly person with an ocean view or 50 acre farm.
I have no problem following the federal guidelines. No one wants anyone to freeze this winter. If we can guarentee this for 10k why not do it. I would require the person to pay off the debt with some sort of volunteer work or public service if possible. As is so often noted in Dartmouth we need volunteers everywhere. Whatever your profession there's somewhere to help.
That's a nice idea Phil. Other towns have such programs, my mom participates in one as a greeter at the High school and library aid.
The people benefiting from these funds will not be receiving huge sums of money. We are only talking a few hundred dollars to get them by until they can be helped by other existing programs. I support this effort but I also feel that there will still be many more who will need assistance and we can't help everyone. It's funny we should be discussing the issue of Dartmouth citizens not being able to afford heating bills when not too long ago the debate was whether they could afford overrides. This is exactly what the "no" people were talking about.
why is it funny Michael? There will always be people that require assistance. These funds if approved are a good thing and should get support, after all all these people are part of our community, but one thing is completely different and separate from the other and should not be pitted against each other.
These three articles all have one thing in common, they are slush funds instead of line items in the spring budget. Come up with the number of courses that will be funded before the end of the fiscal year and I would support the employee training article. I will not support a slush fund for it.
It has been three years since the County paid for disaster training, waitng until spring to come up with the real cost of this training and putting it as a line item in the budget won't make much difference. These $10,000 numbers are arbitrary.
The need to have the money for "emergency" fuel assistance available this winter supercedes my concerns about proper procedure. Perhaps the article could be ammended to turn back any unused money at the end of the fiscal year so this also could be placed as a line item in the spring budget. I don't know if the Fincom's concern that this is not enough money is valid. It is only used to bridge the gap while the Council On Aging gets people enrolled with programs like PACE and Coastline Elderly Services. I support this article. I am not sure why it is sponsored by the Select Board instead of the COA. They would be better able to answer the questions about qualifying for the assistance.
Anon. 3:20, I think Michael was just using "It's funny" solely as an observation, like saying "It's ironic," or It's odd," or "It's comical." I didn't get the feeling he really thought it was "funny."
I think he could have said "It's ironic" because that is what I am getting from his comment.
It's ironic that, when the override was so pressing a need to some, we all, seniors and otherwise, could "afford" an override. It was, after all, just the price of our daily latte. Now the statement is made that some elderly in our community cannot afford heat, by some of the same people that initially said these same elderly could afford an override. Now THAT I find is ironic, the better wording to use, and, let's go a little farther, a bit hypocritical, or whatever you'd like to call it.
And, Michael did say he was in support of this assistance, if you reread his post.
No one really knows what oil and gas will cost in a volatile, unpredictable market and world. It is always expensive and people need to plan for the cost range (myself included). Many elderly need to downsize when their homes out price em just like when my home out prices me, I'll go to an apartment or condo, rental. That's life. I don't agree with Barry on much but I agree that slush funds are dubious.
Phil, Thanks for the details. Specifics help us all understand better. Thanks! Hopefully, you'll clear things up when they get off target in the future.
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