Town Administrator's Weekly Report 9.8.16

Within this T/A report, are a couple of items that seem important.

(1)  5c - "The fee section in this policy has been amended to reflect the emergency regulations issued by the secretary of State's office in February of this year. Those were issued in anticipation of the new law even prior to its enactment. Interestingly, many of my peers were also unaware of this when we followed through to research it."  That seems to be in reference of the fees for public records; most are 5 cents per page, whether one sided or two sided printing and regardless of where the record comes from, as in from a file cabinet or a computer printout. The only difference will be those items whose fees are already covered by MGL, as in the law sets the required fee for some records.

(as of two minutes ago, the fees listed under the draft public records policy still show the wrong fees for public records)


Concerning the fire department, in particular, ambulance service in Templeton; "the acting fire chief and I sat and since the decision to move to ALS service was predicated upon use of per diem to achieve full-time equivalent coverage, the acting fire chief has come to believe that he can only achieve proper coverage for two of the shifts through the use of full-time hires. (four) After a review of the available budget information, I cannot find any allocation of the accompanying fringe benefit package. Additionally, I cannot find anything to support that the hiring of full-time personnel can be supported by the anticipated increase in revenues."

This scenario seems to support what I stated three or four years ago along with what I posted here a short time ago. The only way to have ALS ambulance service is with an increase in full-time employees, paramedics and EMT's, with all the associated costs such as health insurance and retirement. That is not a for or against statement, that is just the way it is. If you want service, you have to pay for it and that comes from property tax. The ambulance receipts fund will not completely pay for the ambulance service, no matter what you may have been told. It can supplement it but not 100% pay for it.

The Templeton fire department has a problem with a pump and it will cost in the tens of thousands to fix or replace. I hope the fire department contacts the Advisory Committee and requests money from the reserve fund, as this is a situation that meets the requirements of the reserve fund.


posted by Jeff Bennett