Thursday, October 29, 2015

With the upcoming meeting of the Town of Templeton, as in a special Town meeting in November. First, by state law, all Towns have to have one Town meeting per year to take care of Town business, then any Town can have any number of other Town meetings, which are called special Town meetings and the selectmen or a certain number of residents can call for a special Town meeting at any other time. Now with regards to a proposed transfer from a Planning Board fund to help pay for the excavator bought for the highway department, I think this looks like the taking of money from other entities in a fraudulent manner, in my opinion anyways. It was reported that this money was originally collected from developers and such for the purpose of maintaining detention ponds but now it is said that the highway department does this work so this money remains in an account unspent, possibly some more "found money". Seems to me that if this tax was collected for a specific reason, it should be spent on that or given back from whom it was collected. I am sure however, that a case might be made that since the funds were collected for this purpose and the highway department is doing said work then technically that money is being used for said purpose. I wonder however how those developers might see this? This could also be one more reason why there are not more business's trying to locate to Templeton. I am also curious on why to majow debt questions at this special Town meeting come before those financial transfers? Why should people be asked to go into debt for about 50 million before they hear the reasons why a FY2015 bill was not paid in a timely manner, what department failed to make the payment or keep track of their purchases? Kind of makes the argument for centralized purchasing, in my opinion. What is the reason (s) for more money to the accounting department or office, as I thought  this had already been addressed/ Kind of makes one wonder just what condition Town finances are in and what the "financial Team" is doing. See you at the Town meeting in November.

jeff Bennett