by Frank Schroth
The 2015 Annual Town Meeting opened last night and got off to a slow, steady start. Town Moderator Brian Walsh gaveled the session to order shortly before 8:00PM. Members of the Milton High Chorus sang the Start Spangled Banner, the body recited the Pledge of Allegiance, the Moderator acknowledged and a moment of silence was observed for Town Meeting Members who passed away this past year, and the Moderator reviewed rules of procedure. And with that Town Meeting was off to the races.
Articles 1 – 14 all passed, the majority unanimously. These included but were not limited to the following:
Article 5 which recommended a $1,659,780 appropriation for capital projects. This amount reflects a slight increase from that published in the warrant. The increase was $186,780 for iPads and iPad carts for the schools. This was made possible by recent voter approval of an override for firefighter health costs. The passage of the override freed up $300K that had been set aside in event the override had not passed. In addition to $18K for iPads the Warrant Committee recommends redistributing $33K for restoring electives that had seen cuts in schools and $80K for hte reserve fund. Capital projects funded also include: $400K for roadways, $180K for a bucket truck, $145K for repairs to fire station buildings, and $160K for the first phase of an upgrade to financial software for the town and schools.
- Article 7 which authorizes the Moderator to establish an audit committee of five members which shall “develop, administer the selection pocess, and shall recommend to the Board of Selectmen the appointment of an independent public accounting firm to conduct an annual audit of the Town’s financial statements.”
- Article 14 which approved an appropiation of $3,705,223 for General Government. This includes salaries and wages for a variety of town hall funcitons such as Law, Insurance, Information Technology, etc as well as the budgets for the Assessors, Town Clerk and Treasurer.
(You can find the full text of the warrant here.)
The elephant in the room as far as articles in the warrant are concerned, is Article 15 which seeks to expand the responsibilities and authority of the Town Administrator. Rick Neely, Chair of the Town Government Study Committee, reviewed the article and spoke to why his committee, together with the Board of Selectmen, was recommending it. In short, the concept is to place day to day operations of the town in the hands of the Town Administrator. This would include hiring and supervision of all town departments under the purview of the selectmen (e.g. Police, Fire, DPW, etc), collective bargaining, financial record keeping, and the annual operating budget. This would free up the Board of Selectmen to focus on strategy and policy.
The discussion of the article began last night and several amendments were put forward. Perhaps the most important was an amendment that would have kept the hiring and firing of the Police and FIre Chiefs with the Board of Selectmen. The amendment was proposed by Town Meeting Members Joe McEttrick and Malcolm Larson. They citied state laws that specified the selectmen as appointing authority. Town Counsel john Flynn explained that this article would change the form of town government as it requires a petition to the legislature. TGSC members Bob Hiss and Peter Mullin both spoke against adoption of the amendment arguing that there were provisions that provided the selectmen with adequate influence on the hiring of the chiefs and that to be effective as a “CEO for the town” and have the department heads function effectively as a team they needed to all report up to a single person. The amendment was defeated.
Descussion of the article will resume tonight when Town Meeting reconvenes.
Congressman Lynch was present at the session and addressed the body. He updates all on a variety of initiatives. Two of especial interest to Milton are ongoing efforts to work with the FAA to address health and noise impacts of airplane traffic over town. He acknowldeged that the FAA is very difficult to work with. “They are not known for cooperation. . . [and they] are less htan responsive and less than respectful” to the communities they affect. However, he remains hopeful and will go “lawyer up” to fight the issue if necessary. Congressman Lynch also discussed reminbursements for snow and storm related costs. FEMA has reimbursed for one storm. Lynch said that he and Capuano are pursuing a line of argument that was successfully used by Buffalo which maintained that the area did not suffer a single snowstorm but an extended weather pattern that lasted for weeks in which the temperature never went above freezinf and dropped in excess of 100″ of snow.
I support a “stronger” TA, but was a bit surprised that Art. 15 model creates a VERY strong TA. I worked with 4 TAs during my 11 yrs. as fire chief and found that our “strong Fire Chief” ( MGL C.48, S.42) kept the politics out of running the MFD, as it was designed to do. Will our next Fire Chief be micromanaged by a strong TA when it comes to MFD daily operations? Could he be fired by TA as long as SM are notified? Yes, the TA could be fired and SM voted out but what about the damage done during this process? I maybe focusing on worse case scenario but our Fire & Police Chief needs some security that he will not be suspended or fired by TA behind closed doors for doing what he uniquely knows best-providing the best fire/police service possible. Article 15, section 4 provides more due process for suspending or terminating the TA than is provided the Fire or Police Chief. I would like to support Art 15, but this issue troubles me. Most qualified candidates for TA will be from outside Milton and probably outside Mass.
Frank,
I hope you’ll be doing coverage of night two of the Town Meeting.
I will be shortly. Took a bit of a break.
“The increase was $186,780 for iPads and iPad carts for the schools. This was made possible by recent voter approval of an override for firefighter health costs.”
This feels like a betrayal. We passed an override to pay for an injured firefighter’s medical care. An override to purchase iPads would not have passed, and the medical care override passage would have been more difficult had voters been told that it would facilitate a huge iPad purchase.
An override for IPADS was never contemplated, nor would it be.
The IPAD request was one of the top recommendations of the Capital Budget Committee. That committee heard and agreed with the School Department’s request for this equipment based on the important role it will play as we transition Milton students to the new, high stakes exams that are administered by computer only. It is crucial that every Milton student have access to these devices as part of the exam preparation process to ensure they have every advantage in passing those exams.
The Warrant Committee was unable to fund this Capital request initially because it simply ran out of money. As part of our budget, it was necessary to allocate $300,000 to the one year costs of health care for Firefighter Pickens in the event that the voters failed to pass an override that provides a more or less permanent resolution to those recurring costs.
After the override was passed, the Warrant Committee met and allocated the $300,000 to other, unmet needs, including the IPAD request from the Capital Committee.
How the money made available by the passage of the override, which had been prudently set aside by the Warrant Committee, would be spent was not known before the election. And the purpose of the medical override went far beyond a one time purchase of a capital item in one year.
There is no “betrayal” in the purchase of iPads. We passed an override to provide dedicated funding for our obligation to pay for medical care for our firefighter. The purpose of this override was so that we could stop borrowing to pay this recurring expense and so that we would not have to pay this expense from funds available within the Prop 2 1/2 levy limit. The passage of the override left funds that would have had to be spent within the levy limit to be spent for other appropriate town purposes. The Warrant Committee determined that the appropriate priority for $186, 780 of funding now available under the levy limit was for iPads. Town Meeting agreed. Next year those funds will be spent for something else. There is no betrayal, deceit, dishonesty, etc. here.
If the beef is with a big iPad purchase, any member of town meeting could have stood up and objected. No one did. I have no reason to believe that this is not an appropriate purchase that will, like most of our technology purchases for the schools, be fully utilized in our schools for years beyond what most would consider their “useful life.”
Michael,
May I be clear on this. Question 1 was to give us the ability to pay for Firefighter Pickens’ medical bills in a cost effective way for the town.
To insuate that this is a slight of hand is disingenuous at best. The Warrant Committee had funds put aside for that purpose and when it was not necessary, those funds were re-allocated..
I would have no part in such a charade.
What an embarrassment it would have been to the Town of Milton if question 1 failed. The consequence of this brave FF being so badly injured serving US would then be $100s of thousands being denied the MFD, MPD & schools. Our FF & police do something every day that few of us ever do – they go to work in a high danger zone in order to make us safe. It is our collective obligation to protect those that protect us in their time of need and allow Town to proceed.