Thursday, March 17, 2016

I did not realize that the version of the Warrant used by the TAB to add in votes and recommendations was the version with erroneous account numbers.  So we printed that version and took copies to the STM.  In the meantime, I created the PowerPoint presentation and gave a copy of the final, accurate version of the Warrant to the Town Clerk.  At the Town Meeting, the motion for Article 4 was read from the PowerPoint slide --- it had the correct account numbers. The certified copy from the Town Clerk also has the correct account numbers. 
Because both the Warrant and the Operating Budget change and evolve during the process, I decided to prevent any confusion with differing versions by posting the official copy in the cloud and giving Selectmen and TAB members access.  
N.B.  The FY'17 budget continued to evolve this week when our assessment from Monty Tech and when our health insurance cost for FY'17 came in.  

Bob
Robert T. Markel
Interim Town Administrator
Town of Templeton
160 Patriots Road
East Templeton, MA 01438
(978)894-2753

The above is from an email concerning issues with the last special Town meeting of November 9, 2015. The issue is that within some transfers, account numbers do not match, specifically, the account number shown for general insurance as 1000-945-900-57-5743-0000 which is the exact same account number given twice as the account number for Town accountant expenses. If you look at the town meeting report on the Templeton Town web site, under town meeting, you can find the copy of the meeting results which at the end says,

A true copy, ATTEST: with the name of the Templeton Town Clerk. Meeting attendance is listed at 356 voters.

In my opinion, the most bothersome part of this is the apparent spin put out to answer questions and concerns posed by members of the Templeton Advisory Board. It is through a process of checks and balances that is needed and is a good thing, that this and many other concerns of a financial nature that have been raised on more than one occasion. Why else are we being asked to put money back into fire/ems after we were just asked to take money from there to pay snow & Ice? I believe all these transfers in the past year demonstrates that there is either not enough money to cover everything or money is not being applied correctly, or both. My opinion is we still have a shell game going on and not one selectmen from Templeton is asking one question about it publicly, as at a meeting of the BOS.

Jeff Bennett