Town Meeting, Final Slog

Since I started writing about Town Meeting, I might as well wrap the final night.  Two finance articles, one bylaw change. See Franklin's  and Susan's  for the details.

"Article 4" is always the main budget, in about 10 motions, grouped by functional area.  I don't know why that level of "granularity," but (probably) as Tevya says – tradition!  I think by department would be more logical, though some would be quite small (a couple hundred thousand dollars) vs the larger ones (schools, $40 million).  Of course that might encourge us to look at individual department head salaries, so we could do performance evaluations on the spot. (Recall the Town Clerk salary love fest on Monday ...)

Nice job by Jack Weiss, who presented the Minuteman budget.  Jack is Belmont's appointment to the Minuteman School Committee.  (Remember, that's just like a school committee in any Massachusetts regional district; in this case, reps are appointed rather than elected.) Belmont has lead the push for Minuteman to get per-pupil spending under control.  Minuteman Superintendent Boquillan has worked hard to "right size", and they've made a lot of progress here in the past year.  There was some of the usual whining that Belmont Public Schools does not promote Minuteman enough. Lots of evidence (this year and recent years) to the contrary.  Perhaps one of these years Donald Mercier will listen.

Warrant Committee Chair Liz Allison did a good job presenting the budget.  Good mix of facts, a few light points (the 'calvary' picture), and she spread some praise around to dept heads.  The WC report, an evolving document, was well-organized and informative. Send them (WC members) ideas for improvements. One aspect that annoyed many of us was that she left the impression that large future increases are the fault of the school deptarment and teachers.  Essentially (the way many heard it) it's because of teacher salaries that we'll need an override every year, just to keep up.  Yeah, teachers are the single biggest cost driver (by shear size), but town staff get similar raises too. And note that many of the town unions are just followers behind the teachers, saying "give us what they got." My kids do that too.

Pat Brusch, chair the Capital Budget Committee (CBC), also deserves credit for a good presentation on Monday. And CBC report was also well-organized and thorough, as it has been for years.

For the school budget, of course officials were patting themselves on the back for "nearly" level service.  (Is that like "Nearly Headless Nick?") We've been doing "level service minus a bit" for years.  I've read that if you drop a frog into a pot of boiling water, it'll jump out; but if you put it in comfortable water, then turn up the heat to boiling, it'll die.  That's what's happening to the schools. Since they've been cutting corners and doing without for years, what would anyone expect? There were some good points about the school resource officer (SRO); we're losing him this year, unless we can find grant money. I think this has become more important given we've lost counselors over the past couple years. (again, a little at a time) Some important notes about fees, which are ever-increasing; this is not quite "public" education anymore.  Of course special ed services are mandatory, yet the WC refuses to include that in the "non-discretionary" piles, or even acknowledge it as such. New School Committee chair Laurie Graham held up fine to questions. When I was SC chair, Superintendent Peter Holland stood front-and-center. (Unless I did and erased that from my memory.)

The WC report answers many questions asked from the floor. Come on, it's TM's responsibility to do their homework! I'd be happy if officials were more snarky with answers, "as it says on page 43 of the WC report, ..." ("Jane, you ignorant slut." I do hope most get that reference.)

For the "Stretch Energy Code" bylaw ... The presentation went on for a bit too long, especially since it started after 10 p.m.  The discussion was as I expected.  Angelo (Firenze) and other conservatives were against it. He basically said (paraphrasing), if it's really good, people will adopt those things voluntarily. They're probably against the clean air act and modern lead paint laws too. A few overboard opinions were expressed in both directions. The gloom and doom scenarios seemed silly. Given all our neighboring towns have adopted this, we are not at a competitive disadvantage, like some (Sami Baghdady) seemed to indicate. Glad to see Roger Colton coming out with a win after a few things he's pushed at TM have been shot down.

So, some of the usual stuff, some interesting points, too many of the same questions from the same people. Glad there was free WiFi in the room for my iPod Touch.