An email to Town Hall (not from Jeff Bennett)
Appears like Templeton residents are losing access to their government, at least the Board of Selectmen.
This current Board of Selectmen would probably not even have a public meeting if they were not required by law to do so.
Wow...................
I sat and watched the BOS meeting of June 11, 2018 and was, well, flabbergasted.
I watched as the BOS read " is anyone taping us". I watched as Julie read "no comments other than during the "public comment" section.
Then we get to the meeting.
Their was more discussion regarding "rules for the meeting" than took place regarding the signing of a 4 year contract with Roselli. The Town Administrator recommends an auditor ( who is auditing his and his finance teams work) and the BOS doesn't even ask one question. This type of response makes me question the entire relationship between the BOS and TA. How can you not ask one question. The TA recommends a party to review his work and you just quickly without question vote a unanimous "Yes". Just another example of the financial team being left to regulate themselves. Look for the last report from the Treasurer or Accountant on the TA weekly report, I believe its in February and something like "taxes due". We have nothing but financial issues in Templeton but yet nobody seems to be paying attention
Next I watched you deal with the request for Lord Rd and North Main. The agenda states a $100,000.00 transfer request. The TA comes with paperwork requesting $110,000.00. Then the TA talks about the request. He mentions a 10% contingency.
Looking at the numbers it goes more like this............
$96,100 actual cost of services requested plus an additional 14.5% contingency or slush fund at that point. It may not seem like much, but the sloppy addition, math, statements could be taken as misrepresentation by the Administration but the BOS doesn't even notice. The TA asked for $4,300 of slop and no questions at all from the over site of the Town. Did anyone even notice?
I am really pleased you were able to wrap it all up in 28 minutes. It was a very efficient lack of over site. Maybe a review of this meeting will give Ms. Richard her answer as to why nobody notifies the BOS regarding department issues. It might be because they wonder.......WHY?
