On October 20, 2016, people get a second chance to vote for, or not, for a new school. Of particular interest to me is what is the best guess cost to the taxpayer going to be. Consider that now, not in the future, $1.00 per thousand will raise $597,000.00. That is based on recent information from the Assessors office in Templeton. That bears checking out on your part.

Now, what follows is from a letter to editor in the Gardner news around this time last year, 2015:


The Templeton Center site has been approved by architects, engineers and the Massachusetts School Building Authority. A few have said that we need a new school but is too costly. The cost to Templeton resulting from state reimbursement is 24.8 million. The annual residential tax is $1.74 per 1,000 home valuation. 

From information at Town meeting on November 9, 2015 and from other meetings, as well as a debt calculator on the website of MA DLS, 24 million dollars for 28 years at 3.5% would mean a yearly payback of about 1.4 million dollars. 

If we take the information from the Assessors office and compare it to the information given at the Town Meeting, I do not see anyway for $1.74 to work, not close. Consider that back in 2015, I believe the information available was $1.00 per thousand would raise $556,000.00. Again, $1.74 per thousand does not work. So why is that? Is that some new math? Using the information from the Assessors office, $2.00 per thousand would raise almost 1.2 million dollars, but we have to have 1.4 million per year, so again, where did this $1.74 come from? Time to get honest, time to be conservative, time to be real, pick one, just be honest and tell people that it is not going to be $1,74, it will be $2.34 per thousand or $2.50 per thousand. 

By the way, just for informational purposes, on those documents available, the $1.74 per thousand had the words "net increase" next to them, because the plan is for another debt exclusion to not go away after 20 years. Remember the one from back in 1996, that was suppose to be paid off in 2016 but now will not be paid off until 2019, well the plan was/is (appears to be) to just keep that on the tax rolls and add the $1.74 to that and that will make the "new" debt payments for the next 28 years. 

All of this can be verified with some work and time.

posted by Jeff Bennett