That Five Hundred Thousand Dollars ($500,000) be hereby appropriated for the purpose of paying costs of the Feasibility Study/Schematic Design work ahead for the Templeton Center Elementary School, located at 17 South Road, in Templeton MA, including the payment of all costs incidental or related thereto, and for which the Town may be eligible for a grant from the Massachusetts School Building Authority ("MSBA"), said amount to be expended under the direction of the Templeton Elementary School Building Committee. To meet this appropriation the Treasurer, with the approval of the Templeton Board of Selectmen, is authorized to borrow said amount under and pursuant to M.G.L. Chapter 44, or pursuant to any other enabling authority. The Town acknowledges that the MSBA's grant program is a non-entitlement, discretionary program based on need, as determined by the MSBA, and any costs the Town incurs in excess of any grant approved by and received from the MSBA shall be the sole responsibility of the Town, and further provided that the appropriation hereunder shall be subject to and contingent upon an affirmative vote of the Town to exempt the amounts required for the payment of interest and principal on said borrowing from the limitations on taxes imposed by M.G.L. 59, Section 21C (Proposition 2½), and that the amount borrowing authorized pursuant to this vote shall be reduced by any grant amount set forth in the Feasibility Study Agreement that may be executed between the Town and the MSBA.

What you will be asked to vote on at the next special Town meeting on March 21, 2016.
Again, it is the responsibility of the Town, not the school district, to borrow and repay all money for this project. Most, if not all, has already been spent. You have to re-vote this because the original article was worded wrong. I hope the proper people, as in Templeton Bond Counsel has looked over the water article to be presented on March 21, 2016 special Town meeting.

Jeff Bennett

Templeton Elementary School is definitely a Town Project being paid for by Templeton taxpayers.
If anyone wishes to dispute that, just pay attention to your tax bills and you can always contact the Town of Phillipston's Treasurer or office of the Phillipston board of selectmen.

This project really began on May 13, during the annual Town meeting which started on May 12, 2009, per the Templeton annual Town report, pages 156 - 157, article 33.

On page 132 of the same 2009 Templeton annual Town report, the returns for Templeton annual elections, and continuing/ending on page 134, question 2, feasibility study for elementary school, 481 yes, 456 no.

Templeton 2009 annual Town report, page 157;

"On a motion duly made and seconded the Town voted to appropriate the sum of five hundred fifty thousand dollars ($550,000.00) for the purpose of funding a feasibility study for the purpose of replacing, building an addition onto or renovating the Templeton Center school located at 17 South Road, Templeton, Massachusetts, said sum to be expended under the direction of the school building committee, and to meet said appropriation, Treasurer, with the approval of the selectmen is authorized to borrow said sum under MGL, chapter 44, or any other enabling authority; that the Town of Templeton acknowledges that the Massachusetts School building authority's grant program is a non-entitlement, discretionary program based on need, as determined by the MSBA, and any costs the Town incurs, on behalf of the district, in excess of any grant approved by and received from the MSBA shall be the sole responsibility of the Town, and that the amount of borrowing authorized pursuant to this vote shall be reduced by any amounts received from the MSBA prior to the issuance of bonds or notes under this vote. In addition, no sums shall be borrowed or expended here under, unless and until the Town shall have voted to exclude the amounts required to be raised to repay any borrowing here under from the limitations of chapter 59, section 21c of the general laws (proposition 2 1/2)"

So it seems pretty clear this is was and is a town project that should be under the complete direction of the Templeton Board of selectmen. Templeton residents should not have to watch multiple different meetings (some held on the same night and same time) to watch how their money is spent. This is why it is important for residents to attend Town meeting, to vote and to attend selectmen's meetings.

Jeff Bennett

Oddity in Templeton, Looking at the warrant for the Special Town Meeting on March 21, 2016, the first article bothers me in technicality so I emailed the entire warrant to Templeton Town counsel. I stated I had concerns with the first article concerning the water dept. I was informed that he had not seen any of this. So apparently, Templeton Town counsel was not consulted on these matters. The answer Town Counsel received from the Town Administrator was he was trying to save money and since bond counsel had already looked at these, he (T/A) saw no reason to involve two attorneys. The question is what bond counsel was the town administrator talking about, Templeton Bond Counsel or the one hired by the water dept. to write an article to allow them to borrow money or rather the taxpayers borrow and the water customers paying back. To be sure, I have no authority to ask legal counsel for the Town of Templeton to do anything and I did not, I merely asked if he had seen the warrant articles. I have been told that now the Templeton town administrator has "invited" Templeton Town Counsel to attend this meeting. Since Templeton municipal water dept. is paying for this meeting, send them the entire bill to include cost of Templeton Town Counsel. We are talking about over a million dollars here. Again, this is not about the project, it is about the details. Templeton is already being asked to re-vote one article because of failure of Town officials to do diligence on behalf of the taxpayers. One would think they have learned the lesson?

Jeff Bennett

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

Bad news for Templeton Town budget, the assessment for Monty Tech is up by $97,000.00.

Hopefully this will come up at the next Advisory Board meeting this wednesday.

According to the latest budget versus actual, last year's assessment for Monty Tech was $611,480.00, so that is a fair amount of money no longer available.

posted by Jeff Bennett

Massachusetts General Laws, chapter 115, Veterans Benefits

section 8; Payments and reimbursement of burial expense; certificate.

Section 8. Amounts expended by the burial agent under the provisions of section 7 shall not exceed $2,000 for the funeral and burial of a person under this chapter, provided that the cost of funeral and burial does not exceed $3,000 and there are insufficient resources in the estate of such person to pay for the cost of such funeral and burial. Any resources of such person shall be deducted from the maximum cost of the funeral and burial allowance hereunder and the difference, subject to the limitation set forth in this paragraph, shall be paid by the burial agent. No city or town shall be reimbursed under this section for any amount so expended for a single burial if the total expense of such burial, exclusive of the purchase price of the grave, the cost of the grave opening and the cost of a cement vault liner if one is required by the cemetery regulations, by whomsoever incurred, exceeded $500 for a child under the age of seven or $900 for any other person. The burial shall not be made in a cemetery or burial ground used exclusively for the burial of persons under the provisions of chapter 117 or in any part of a cemetery or burial ground so used. Relatives of the deceased who are unable to bear the expense of burial may be allowed to conduct the funeral. The full amount so expended, the name of the deceased and, if the deceased was a veteran, the regiment, company, station, organization or vessel in which such veteran served, the date of death, place of interment and, if the deceased was a spouse or widow or widower, the name of such veteran's spouse and date of marriage and, if the deceased was a dependent child, the name of the veteran and such other details as the commissioner may require, shall be certified on oath to said commissioner in such manner as said commissioner may approve, by the burial agent and the treasurer of the city or town expending the amount, within three months after the burial. The commissioner shall endorse upon the certificate the allowance of such amounts as have been paid and reported according to the foregoing provisions and shall transmit the certificate to the comptroller. Seventy-five per cent of the amounts so paid and allowed for burial expenses of veterans or dependents by the cities and towns wherein they reside shall be paid by the commonwealth to the several cities and towns on or before November 10 in the year after the expenditures have been made. Notwithstanding the requirements as to residence as set forth in section 5, the commissioner may authorize the burial agent of a city or town to arrange for the proper interment of the body of an indigent veteran who dies within the commonwealth. The definitions contained in section 1 of chapter 114 shall be applicable to this section and section 9.

posted by Jeff Bennett

A long read but important information for Town meeting as I believe we should have a basic understanding of what we vote on.

Section 53E1/2. Notwithstanding the provisions of section fifty-three, a city or town may annually authorize the use of one or more revolving funds by one or more municipal agency, board, department or office which shall be accounted for separately from all other monies in such city or town and to which shall be credited only the departmental receipts received in connection with the programs supported by such revolving fund. Expenditures may be made from such revolving fund without further appropriation, subject to the provisions of this section; provided, however, that expenditures shall not be made or liabilities incurred from any such revolving fund in excess of the balance of the fund nor in excess of the total authorized expenditures from such fund, nor shall any expenditures be made unless approved in accordance with sections forty-one, forty-two, fifty-two and fifty-six of chapter forty-one.

Interest earned on any revolving fund balance shall be treated as general fund revenue of the city or town. No revolving fund may be established pursuant to this section for receipts of a municipal water or sewer department or of a municipal hospital. No such revolving fund may be established if the aggregate limit of all revolving funds authorized under this section exceeds ten percent of the amount raised by taxation by the city or town in the most recent fiscal year for which a tax rate has been certified under section twenty-three of chapter fifty-nine. No revolving fund expenditures shall be made for the purpose of paying any wages or salaries for full time employees unless such revolving fund is also charged for the costs of fringe benefits associated with the wages or salaries so paid; provided, however, that such prohibition shall not apply to wages or salaries paid to full or part-time employees who are employed as drivers providing transportation for public school students; provided further, that only that portion of a revolving fund which is attributable to transportation fees may be used to pay such wages or salaries and provided, further, that any such wages or salaries so paid shall be reported in the budget submitted for the next fiscal year.

A revolving fund established under the provisions of this section shall be by vote of the annual town meeting in a town, upon recommendation of the board of selectmen, and by vote of the city council in a city, upon recommendation of the mayor or city manager, in Plan E cities, and in any other city or town by vote of the legislative body upon the recommendation of the chief administrative or executive officer. Such authorization shall be made annually prior to each respective fiscal year; provided, however, that each authorization for a revolving fund shall specify: (1) the programs and purposes for which the revolving fund may be expended; (2) the departmental receipts which shall be credited to the revolving fund; (3) the board, department or officer authorized to expend from such fund; (4) a limit on the total amount which may be expended from such fund in the ensuing fiscal year; and, provided, further, that no board, department or officer shall be authorized to expend in any one fiscal year from all revolving funds under its direct control more than one percent of the amount raised by taxation by the city or town in the most recent fiscal year for which a tax rate has been certified under section twenty-three of chapter fifty-nine. Notwithstanding the provisions of this section, whenever, during the course of any fiscal year, any new revenue source becomes available for the establishment of a revolving fund under this section, such a fund may be established in accordance with this section upon certification by the city auditor, town accountant, or other officer having similar duties, that the revenue source was not used in computing the most recent tax levy.

In any fiscal year the limit on the amount that may be spent from a revolving fund may be increased with the approval of the city council and mayor in a city, or with the approval of the selectmen and finance committee, if any, in a town; provided, however, that the one percent limit established by clause (4) of the third paragraph is not exceeded.

The board, department or officer having charge of such revolving fund shall report to the annual town meeting or to the city council and the board of selectmen, the mayor of a city or city manager in a Plan E city or in any other city or town to the legislative body and the chief administrative or executive officer, the total amount of receipts and expenditures for each revolving fund under its control for the prior fiscal year and for the current fiscal year through December thirty-first, or such later date as the town meeting or city council may, by vote determine, and the amount of any increases in spending authority granted during the prior and current fiscal years, together with such other information as the town meeting or city council may by vote require.

At the close of a fiscal year in which a revolving fund is not reauthorized for the following year, or in which a city or town changes the purposes for which money in a revolving fund may be spent in the following year, the balance in the fund at the end of the fiscal year shall revert to surplus revenue unless the annual town meeting or the city council and mayor or city manager in a Plan E city and in any other city or town the legislative body vote to transfer such balance to another revolving fund established under this section.

The director of accounts may issue guidelines further regulating revolving funds established under this section.

from MA general law, chapter 44.
posted by Jeff Bennett