School Override - Open Forum

New Comments 6/06



In a very short time we will be asked to raise our taxes by hundreds of dollars a year to support the district school budget. Is this a million dollar heist or necessary spending to maintain the education of our children?

We have our opinion . . . We are against it! . . . How do you feel?

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NOTE: We have dropped “Comment Moderation”. You can now post directly to the blog. This will allow more of a dialog without the delay. If it gets out of hand with libel or bad language we will put it back.

HG

Ken O'Brien

New Comments as of 6/10

Why did this man quit?

Rumor has it that Ken stepped down as a selectmen because he covets the Administrative Assistants job. Under Mendon town by-law an elected official cannot become an employee of the town for 1 year from the date of leaving office. The word on the street is that our current AA, Michael McCue will put in a year or two here and move on to a more lucrative and probably saner environment.

What do you think? Would Ken make a good AA? He spent 3 years as a selectman and a year on the Finance Committee.

Regionalization

New comments as of 6/03

We received this email from the Deacon. He/She is a regular poster on the Millville Blog. What do you think?

The Deacon's concept of Regionalization is based on a phrase from the " Old Salesman's Handbook". "What got you by in the past will not get you by in the future".
Millville is simply too small to justify the expense of maintaining a full time dispatch function. I also believe the same is true for Blackstone, Hopedale, Mendon, Uxbridge, Douglas, and Upton. There is simply too much duplication of service in a small geographic area. There is strength in numbers and economic efficiencies. However, I realize that "startup" costs will be an issue.Regionalization is present in New England. Lakes Region Mutual Fire Aid in New Hampshire dispatches from one location to 36 towns covering 1494 square miles. York County Maine Sheriff dispatches Fire, Police and EMS from one location for a minimum of 14 towns. These are not small towns. Most of the time two dispatchers are on duty. Several Worcester County Towns have a Regionalized Dispatch Center located in New Braintree. Participating towns include: The Brookfields, Brimfield and others. Anything is possible. "Home Rule" has been the biggest obstacle. Support from Dick Moore and Jennifer Callahan has been non-existent.

OK, who is next? Much more can be stated.

THE DEACON

Scam Averted

New Comments as of 6/02

This is the original Rocket J. Squirrel and Bullwinkle J. Moose. If you’re over45 you probably remember the TV series that ran from 1959 to 1964. You youngsters will just have to take our word for it.

The cartoon has little to do with this post other than Mendon has a duo of it’s own who are nicknamed after the two pictured above. Mendon’s pair bears more resemblance to the villains Boris Badunov and Natasha Fatale from the same show.

Our daring duo are long-term employees at town hall. They are Jean Berthold, Assistant Assessor and Claudia Cataldo the Town Accountant. They attempted a snow job at the Annual Town Meeting that failed. This is how the story goes.

It seems that there has been a move afoot for several years to change the ratio of the town’s contribution to employee health care from the current 90% to something that more resembles the real world. Say 80% or, god forbid 75% that is what our teachers get. Soaring insurance costs coupled with additional employees and retirees (yes retirees get the 90% contribution until they die) has created a huge expense for taxpayers. Health care costs in Mendon have grown by double digits every year for the last decade and promise to go even higher. Several boards of selectmen have tried to change the split from 90/10 to something more reasonable only to be met with nasty opposition spearheaded by our very own pair of loyal employees.

A few months ago this pair hatched a plan to get an article on the annual town meeting warrant by petition that would adopt the town’s personnel policy as a by-law thus making the 90/10 split the law of the town and impossible for the selectmen to change without voter approval. An article by petition for the annual meeting only requires 10 signatures so the task was not too daunting and Article 32 was born.

The selectmen or more precisely their administrative assistant quickly countered with Article 33 which would have made the split 80/20 and nullified Article 32 if it had passed.

Jean Berthold (a/k/a Bullwinkle) and Claudia Cataldo (a/k/a Rocky) were quick to promote their cause on the town meeting floor. Their arguments were persuasive if you didn’t know what they were up to. Jean Berthold attempted to raise her voice above everyone and was quickly shut down by Moderator Holmes. He is probably the only man who has ever shut her up. Good Job Art! In the end cooler heads prevailed and the article was defeated.

The problem came with the next article. The Selectmen (Cutler) moved to pass over article 33. Why would they squander the best chance in years to change the split? Cowardice comes to mind. This “pair” intimidates this board of selectmen and many others. The Eye is hearing a lot about these two. Stay tuned for the further adventures of Mendon's Rocky & Bullwinkle.

The next episode:
Good Jobs at Good Wages

– or –

My Way or the Highway...

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Photo Copyright © Jay Ward Productions, Inc - Many thanks to Jay for a great cartoon.

Special Town Meeting Tonight

New Comments as of 5/30

The town meeting tonight will have a heavy tilt toward public safety money.

We can only hope that the meeting is not stacked and the vote is decided when people walk through the door. The issue of public safety is far too important to have people grinding their personal axe.

If you can attend, do it. The more people with common sense that are there the better the outcome. The following posts from Kevin Rudden’s blog illustrate in the first case how dangerous a stacked town meeting can be to the town and in the second case that concerns and questions can be reasonable and productive.

"we just like messing with ernie. we were in the same situation last year when the money for fd wages got voted down. ernie had to lay off two full time fire fighters. it will be interesting to see what he does this year. he has no house to clean."
# posted by Anonymous : 4:57 AM

"Some of us don't just like messing with Ernie. We just want to see his spending curbed. He does it with the police department and now he's doing it with the fire department. A good manager knows how to manage his budget and I'm not seeing that with him. The town gives him everything he asks for without question and many of us out here are sick of it. He needs to be held accountable for the increase in spending at the fire department and he needs to explain why he needs to keep coming back every three or four months in Special Town Meeting for more money. When he took over he said that he would reduce the FD budget by 6%. I'm not seeing it. If you go through the Annual Town Reports for 2004 and 2005 and compare the requests for money by the FD in the warrants, you will see a huge difference in the amount of money asked for. Someone has some 'splainin to do and I hope he's ready to do it tonight."
# posted by Anonymous : 5:06 AM

It's raining there is nothing else to do. Be at Miscoe Hill School at 7:00. If not you, who? If not now, when?

Hanging Gardens

Public Safety Meeting Tonight

New Comments as of 5/10

The Public Safety Building Advisory Committee will meet tonight at 7:00 at the Senior Center.

They will address the direction the effort will go from here. There are sure to be Selectmen and Chief Horn in attendance.

If you can make time to go it may be very enlightening. At the very least if Sharon Cutler and Dennis Shaheen are there it will be entertaining.

We will be looking for your observations tomorrow.

Sharon Cutler Lies with a Straight Face

New Comments as of 5/13

Don't miss the Milford Daily News article today about Mendon's Public Safely Building. It is very clear that Cutler is doing damage control over the defeat of the proposed project. Rather than getting a plan in place to deal with issues the selectmen should have dealt with prior to the purchase of the Fino land, she claims that everything was done correctly. Oh Really Sharon.

"We did a full environmental study before we agreed to purchase the property," she said. "We spent $22,000 for it."

Apparently Sharon missed the warning in the Tighe & Bond report that appeared in two places. “ A full risk assessment … must be done.. before any development” What part of you blew it doesn’t she understand?

The, in Sharon's words, full environmental study was only preliminary and contained the above warning in the executive summary and in the body of the report. There was also a separate letter strongly recommending further testing. Hello, anybody home?

Sharon still claims there are 90 contaminated farms in Mendon. Like that is going to make her sin look any less egregious. It is not true but Sharon would throw anybody under the bus to make herself look better. Just ask the former firemen.

"They want more information on the soil and we'll be meeting with the Board of Health on that to see if they can put together an order of conditions.”

The Board of Health does not have the expertise or the resources to deal with this type of thing. There is no way they will be able to conduct a full risk assessment of the property. That has to be done by an outside firm that specializes in such things.

The sooner Cutler stops practicing damage control and playing the CYA game and gets down to the task at hand, the sooner Mendon can address the public safety issue. We have the plan and we have the site. Too bad we still don’t have the leadership.

Annual Town Meeting Tonight

New Comments as of 5/13

This is where all your money gets spent. If you can possibly be there to protect your investment in the town you live in, do it!

Your attendance tonight may save you hundreds of dollars over the coming year.

There is not much left of our Republic. Town meeting is one of the few remaining ways to have a direct affect on the system that governs you.

See you there!

The School Override

New Comments as of 5/18

Total Pupil Expenditures ( Per Mass Dept of Education)

District----------------------------Number of students (FTE)
1999 . . . . . . . . . . $10,192,294 . . . . . . . . . . .1,914
2003. . . . . . . . . . $16,028,479 . . . . . . . . . . .2,546
2007 (est) . . . . . $25,000,000. . . . . . . . . . .3,000 (est)

1999-2003 funding - 36% Increase
1999-2003 students - 25% Increase

2003-2007 funding - 36% Increase
2003-2007 students - 15% Increase

The 2007 numbers are before the override.

Question: Over the two five year periods here, why does it cost 10% more for the same increase in student population from 2003 to 2007? What percentage are teacher salaries and what percentage is administration?

Question: If these numbers hold true over the next ten years does that mean the school budget will be $34,000,000 in 2012 and $46,000,000 in 2017, nearly double what it is today?

Remember none of these numbers include the cost of building new schools. New students entering the system have been dropping for 2 years. Yes, utilities are way up, we pay them also. All the more reason to question the affordability of the extra 4% for "improvement" the District wants in an override this year.

Is the override necessary? We don't think it is.

Election Returns

New Comments as of 5/8


If you think it wasn't worth your effort to go vote today, you were wrong. The Public Safety Building question lost by 25 votes. Readers of this blog made the difference. Our hat is off to all 700+ of you who visited this week. Now because you have spoken the powers that used to be will have to do this project in the light of day and get it right this time.

Other Results: Your new selectman is David Breen. Art Holmes remains your moderator and Robert Gilchrist replaces Shirley Smith on the Water Board. Donald Morin will sit on the School Committee for 3 years. Congratulations to the winners. We look forward to reporting on how you handle the public trust.

THE RESULTS

Selectman
BREEN 813
Shaheen 298

School Committee
MORIN 510
Harmon 422

Moderator
HOLMES 597
Duffy 450

Water Commission
GILCHRIST 638
Smith 392

Public Safety Building Over-ride
NO 570
Yes 545

Remember YOU made the difference.

Hanging Gardens

VOTE TODAY

It's your turn!