Tags
arguing, budgets, politics, postaday2012, small town, voting
Boy, recuperating after last night’s meeting has not been very pleasant. I have that foggy headache from being up way past my bedtime which makes thinking a slow process. How to explain last night’s town meeting and why it was such a long drawn out argumentative allocation of town money for the annual budget? Essentially, our fiscal history is quite embarrassing, since 2003 our books have not reconciled completely, the past three years have been dismal, the town has been negative free cash for these years, we are broke. The issue at the heart of the economic matter is that the three financial officers, the treasurer, accountant and tax collector, all elected positions of three years, have somehow over a long period of time not reconciled the revenues and expenses to the extent that the outside accounting firm engaged to do a turn over audit, told the townspeople that our books have become inauditable. Last night, the finance committee recommended that the town vote to put monies aside in two separate accounts to be kept in reserve for emergency purposes, there was so much arguing and haggling over the amounts, it got worse. When the subject of setting aside a certain amount of money to be used to have help in recreating the fiscal books from the prior decade, there was a huge resistance at the usefulness of the said project. Yet the towns people weren’t happy with the limited resources that they are left with since our town refuses to accept responsibility and accountability. It is tragic and demoralizing, they have been given a recommendation by the finance committee and by the state’s Department of Revenue to invest in putting their fiscal books in order and the townspeople were arguing against it. My brain started to check out and I have many doodles, some of them quite lovely, to prove the shutting down of any intellectual processes left in my head after driving back from Boston just to attend this illustrious town meeting. Anyway, it is done, my civic duty satisfied and tomorrow I will arise refreshed after a good nights sleep.
laurieanichols 