No one is fooled, not when the Town Administrator sends documents to the Advisory Committee stating things such as;
"Snow & Ice - Failure to plan for expenses of making sand." Who is in charge of planning a department expense such as "making sand" for winter time? Unplanned purchase of used truck for the fleet. Who is responsible for asking selectmen to buy a truck on credit, as in use the deficit spending law to get around capital planning and town meeting to buy a truck? Unplanned repair to machine that rescreens sand at the highway garage. Why is the sand rescreened? Was it not done properly the first time? Again, why is this repair being done on credit rather than from the maintenance expense account? Again, this action results in having to find more money to pay this bill which will become due. The town either has to find the money from existing funds, remember the last time when money was taken from fire/EMS salary to pay for snow & ice deficit then had to put some back because that caused a shortage in that account! So now highway department head, again goes to the credit card, the selectmen allow it and now that money will have to be found and again, it takes away from other departments. This is not new and is no surprise to this resident nor the Advisory Committee. We can read and we get financial updates.

The town administrator also included this:
"The issue that concerns me is to preserve as much of the reserve fund as possible until we approach year's end. An over transfer from the reserve fund is effectively trapped in the account into which it is transferred until May 1 of each year. Preserving as much of the reserve fund as long as possible provides us with maximum flexibility to manage the budget." Jeffy was not fooled again little Davey, but you may have been.

Notes on the expense ledger indicate that the fire/EMS account may again be targeted for transfer, as the note reads Firefighter/EMS salaries, with a balance of $118,733.56, as of February 2, 2017 has the note (May 1 source of $'s).

posted by Jeff Bennett