Officials debating finer points of warrant articles
Published on May 1st, 2002
STONEHAM, MA - The Schools, the Selectmen, the Town Administrator and the Finance Board agree: they will ask townspeople to spend $5,617,125 to run Stoneham for fiscal 2003.
The people will respond at the May 6 Annual Town Meeting.
Selectmen approved updated figures from TA David Berry at their April 23 meeting. The comprises reported last week were made official, but several loose ends remain.
What about Charlie?
The Finance and Advisory Board wants to pay elected officials with stipends not salaries, so these officials will not be eligible for pension benefits.
The Board voted to make this change, grandfathering current officials but starting the new policy with rookie Selectman Charles Smith, who was elected this April. Selectmen voted to grandfather Charlie and start after the next election.
“We want it to be so we’re all treated the same,” said Selectmen Chairman Tony Kennedy. However, unless all the Selectmen leave at once, there will be some overlap.
Smith said he does not care how he is paid.
The Finance Board will revisit the issue at their May 2 meeting and, if necessary, hammer out a last minute compromise with Selectmen, said Finance Board Chairman Richard Gregorio.
Squaring 2002
Another loose end has dangled for a year. The annual reconciliation of the previous fiscal year’s budget is Article 6 of the Special within the Annual Town Meeting (this convoluted format is the norm). The Town needs to spend $254,000 to square the account.
However, the Finance Board disagrees with the source of funding to pay one of the larger bills, an invoice from Gale Associates, the company that cleaned up the railroad right of way.
“The money is budgeted to come from the Reserve Fund, but some members of the Finance Board think it should come from the School Building money,” Gregorio said.
Previous bills from Gale were paid from the School Building account.
The Finance Board will discuss this matter on May 2. The Board will also discuss whether to support Articles 1 and 4 of the Special. Article 1 has to do with motorized scooter restrictions. And Article 4 asks the Town to OK cell towers on or within Fire Department property.
“I’m not sure where the majority of the Board is one this one,” Gregorio said Tuesday.
Old wound
As reported previously, the Finance Board has deferred to other boards or recommended favorable action on all but one of the Annual Town Meeting articles. The Finance Board disagreed with Selectmen and recommended against paying to fix a drainage problem on citizen John DeGeorge’s private property. DeGeorge alleges that the problem was a result of negligence by the Town.
New boiler
This week Selectmen and the Finance Board agreed that the Town should borrow $65,000 to pay for a new boiler at the East School, Article 8 of the Special.
The School Department was concerned last week that wording of article might not allow the Town to borrow money to pay for the boiler, but Stoneham’s bond counsel said a motion to borrow money was OK.
The School Department rents the East School to a special education collaborative to which Stoneham belongs.
Stonehamites in uniform
Selectmen also agreed with the Finance Board that no funding exists for auxiliary police uniforms, but this didn’t close the debate.
The Finance Board recommended not spending the money because they could not find a funding source, but Selectmen Bob Sweeney, Cosmo Ciccarello and Charles Smith voted to buy the uniforms.
The Boards will meet this week to find the money or agree to hold off on the uniforms until fall, Gregorio said.
Man with the plan
The only other oddity of this season’s Meeting is the zoning article sponsored by Town Planner Michael Gallerani, Article 3 of the Special. The article isn’t odd — it asks that land previously changed from a business use to a medical use be changed back because the medical use never came to be. But the fact that the Planner is sponsoring the change instead of the Planning Board or Selectmen is different.
Different strokes
Disagreements about how to pay elected officials, where to get the money to reconcile 2002, where to get the money to pay for auxiliary police uniforms, whether or not to pay for DeGeorge’s drainage, what to do about cellular antennae at the Fire Station and what, if anything, to say about scooter restrictions are the wrinkles left for Town officials to iron out in the last week before Town Meeting 2003.
Usually everything is locked in weeks before the meeting. The Town bylaws require as much, but with a $53.6 million budget during a national and statewide economic slump, Stoneham officials have produced a balanced budget that will maintain jobs and services under the Proposition 2 1/2 tax cap.
This is what Town officials did. On May 6 residents say with their votes whether they approve of how it was done.
“I invite everyone to come out and express their thoughts,” Kennedy said. “It’s your last shot.”
The Town Meeting begins at 7:30 p.m. at Town Hall, May 6.
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