So, does anyone think it might be time to require licensing of cats, if for no other reason than to aid animal control officers, so called animal shelters and just reglar people who may find a stray cat. I personally once had a dog in my yard, very friendly who met me when I came home one night, I thought he was just passing through, but when he was still here the next morning, curled up by the front door, I gave him some water and food and checked his collar for a license, called the number on the rabies tag, found who owner was and brought the dog home to them. They were thankful for that. I could not have done that without license information. Since records show that as of June 30, 2022, Templeton raised over 37 thousand dollars from just dog license fees, while there was a budget request of less than $800.00 to purchase said licenses along with postage and cards, I believe the fee for a dog or cat license could be reduced, by way of town meeting vote, to lower cost to no more than 5 bucks. We just pick a dollar figure and that would be that. One can expect push back from many municipal figureheads on this citing loss of revenue, ah, those fees help pay for animal control officer (which would be pure poppycock) The animal control officer costs are covered within police department budget. To show both sides, money to cover town operating expenses, including the schools, come from 3 basic places, real estate taxes (taxes) state aid and local receipts, which dog licenses are part of. The catch is, fees, are supposed to be set to cover the cost of a service only provided to those who use it. Not everyone owns a dog, but everyone can call animal control, so why penalize or make dog owners pay for animal control? After all, the meals tax was sold to residents and business alike as going to pay for capital, when was the last time you saw an article at town meeting for capital paid for by meals tax revenue, which according to records, was 67 thousand dollars for fiscal year 22, which goes from July 1, 2021 until June 30, 2022. (you can see this information for yourself by going to town website, click on find it fast, click on R, then reports and presentations, then reports and scroll down until you see quarterly finance and look at fourth quarter fy2022, open that and scroll down to page 23 and look for meals tax) When we go to vote at town meeting, we need to understand what is being asked of us and when we are told money is not part of taxes or this program will be for this, we need to know the real deal; CPC money is tax dollars, just not raised by way of the tax rate, it is a steady 3% surcharge (fee or tax, however you wish to label it) and it is shown on your real estate tax bill.