By Jon Prestage
Editor
5/8/08

(previous)
No warrant articles were considered by members at the Tuesday meeting because of lengthy budget presentations by Fagan and School Committee Chair Beirne Lovely and questions posed by some members as to what affect a non-contingent budget avoiding an override would have on the community.
At the point when consideration of the first of 11 budgetary warrant articles containing contingent budget options was opened for member discussion, the meeting was adjourned until Thursday, so the sense of members as to whether they would support Selectmen and the School Committee and vote for budgets requiring overrides was unknown.
However, following the presentations by Fagan and Lovely, some Town Meeting members stood up to express their concerns for the town.
Selectmen and School Committee members acknowledge there is no resident support for a tax-hike this year, and no clear case has yet been made to the public for an override.
“When your Warrant Committee puts together a budget that exceeds the limit and then they recommend it, aren’t they deciding that the town is going to do an override?” asks one source, saying Selectmen should tell the Warrant Committee when to draft an override budget as opposed to the other way around.
“The Selectmen are in their positions to take a stand, and they’re waiting for someone to call them and advise them,” another insider says. “Obviously, they don’t know what to do.”
The situation is further muddied with recent closed budget meetings organized by Warrant Committee Chair Katie Conlon that include Selectmen Chair Marion McEttrick and School Committee Chair Beirne Lovely.
One such meeting took place on Tuesday, April 22, the day prior to a joint public meeting of the groups. (Note story on page 1).
Conlon says the meetings are “ad hoc” and are used to keep open communication lines between officials. There have been at least three meetings this spring.
“It’s really not any different than picking up the phone and calling, which I do fairly frequently,” she says. “It doesn’t have an impact on policy decisions.”
The state’s open meeting law requires meetings between officials where decisions are made be posted in advance and open to the public. Decisions require a quorum of board members.
The meetings in question do not contain quorums and are not posted but their effect on budgeting is unknown.
“I don’t think the idea of having that kind of committee works,” says Selectman John Shields, responding to the closed meetings. “It’s setting up a quasi-official committee that no one asked to be set up. They should do their jobs and not have a separate entity in the middle of them.”
Shields says the meetings are a way to get around the open meeting law.
“I don’t think we’re getting all the information about what’s being talked about in those meetings,” he says. “It’s a committee that meets outside the light of day and I prefer not to operate that way.”
McEttrick maintains the group makes no decisions but that it serves to improve the flow of information between the three boards. She compares the meetings to informal discussions she has with department heads.
“It’s to get frank feedback,” she says. “It might be better that it’s not in a public forum. We might be able to resolve a problem before it even becomes a problem. It could be harder to resolve once it gets out in public.”
The two sources argue that the process has left the public out of budget discussions and not informed about the town’s true budget situation.
McEttrick says budgeting was complicated with the injury of Firefighter Tony Pickens last summer. It was expected the town would need to cover more than $1 million in medical costs, and, as a result, officials told departments to submit conservative budget requests in preparation. She says the figures they came up with may not accurately reflect the needs in town.
McEttrick says the increased costs delayed preparations for an operational override.
When insurance consultants drastically reduced the medical costs, officials switched gears and began considering an operational override, but the process may have started too late according to McEttrick.
“I don’t believe there was a mistake made in that,” she says. “I believe it was just circumstances.”
Selectmen and School Committee members have commented about the non-existent override movement and have asked for volunteers to step up.
The Milton Times uses comments from unnamed sources reluctantly and only when the information provided can be obtained in no other way but yet is deemed important to readers. Sourcing enables the person quoted but unnamed to speak freely without the fear of repercussions from peers, supervisors or the community. Multiple sources can be used to verify the comments of each one, if the information is obtained independently, as is the case here.
“If the people understood (the financial situation) better, they’d support the overrides,” one of the sources says. “They’re just generating fear. If we don’t get this or that, we’re going to lose teachers and your child is going to be subjugated to an inferior education. Fire fatalities could increase. Police might not be able to come and assist you, if someone breaks into your house.”
Selectman Kathy Fagan says budget planning in the school department was difficult and delayed this year, partly due to complications from the retirement of Superintendent Magdalene Giffune in June.
“A lot of people in town were waiting for that piece of the puzzle before starting to pay attention,” she says about the school budget.
McEttrick says, “What we can do depends on what the public is willing to do. I am not willing to vote to put something on the ballot in the absence of a campaign. It only happened once before and it was a miserable failure.”
Both McEttrick and Fagan say the economic climate also has an impact on override attitudes.
“The economy has been tricky for a lot of people,” says Fagan.
The first source suggests the Warrant Committee may be overstretching its budget-making responsibilities, while Selectmen hide behind the committee when it suits its purposes.
“My impression is that this is getting longer every year,” the source says about the Warrant Committee’s financial report printed in the introduction to the Town Meeting warrant. “It’s a narrative that tries to put you in a certain mindset. It seems to me they’ve moved into areas they were never supposed to be in.”
The Warrant Committee is responsible for making budget recommendations to Town Meeting, which decides on appropriations.
Selectmen have the only authority to place an override question on the ballot, which can be done before or after Town Meeting decides on the final budget number.
“Now they want to compete with the Selectmen and the School Committee for authority and control?” asks the first source.