At the risk of being accused of sounding like a broken record, I am posting this to inform residents of action taken by selectmen that would seem to go against Templeton Town by-laws.

Article XLII - Capital Planning by-law

Section 1. Capital Improvement Committee:

The Board of selectmen is hereby authorized to establish and appoint a Capital Improvements Committee, to be composed of five members, for a term of one year.

The following boards and committees shall nominate one of their members to serve annually:

The Advisory Committee
The Board of Selectmen
The School Committee
The Planning Board
A member from the community (preferable with some relevant experience in purchasing or general business practices)
The town administrator or town accountant as exofficio member.

The committee shall chose it's own officers.

Section 2: Committee duties;

To facilitate the reasonable acquisition and replacement of capital items (defined as assets and projects with a useful life of five or more years, and a cost of more than $10,000.00)

So the question could be; Did the selectmen knowingly go against the Town by-law with regards to capital purchase of a truck with a cost of more than $10,000.00? Said truck was purchased by way of using deficit spending (as in spending money you have not appropriated nor perhaps do not have). This now adds to the total of money spent that must now be made available to pay, from where and at what cost to other things? Will something else have to suffer to pay for these items?

Another part of this by-law is:
It is the intent of this by-law that all capital improvements requested by a town department or board be considered in the committee's report before presentation to the town for appropriation. I suppose one more way to get around town meeting is to purchase said truck by way of the old charge account, snow & ice deficit spending.

posted by Jeff Bennett