Special summer Town Meeting on Aug. 19
Published on July 14th, 2004
STONEHAM, MA - Faced with a citizen petition containing 283 certified signatures, the town's Board of Selectmen reluctantly voted 3-2 Tuesday night to call a Special Town Meeting on August 19 that will consider whether to transfer $300,000 to the school system for the rehiring of elementary school teachers.
While Selectmen Cosmo Ciccarello and Bob Sweeney voted against the measure, several other board members questioned the need for the meeting in light of the recent override vote. Opining that the Selectmen's concerns were irrelevant in the eyes of the law, Town Counsel William Solomon told board members they had an obligation to accept the petition.
"What is your obligation? The statute says the Selectmen shall call a Special Town Meeting. Shall is of course a mandatory word. This is what you have to do. It doesn't give you discretion. It doesn't say, if you don't think it's a good idea that you can turn down the meeting," explained Solomon upon learning that the petition contained the minimum 200 required signatures.
According to Oak Street resident Carol Feke, who also serves as Chairman of Stoneham Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility, she began acquiring signatures for a Special Town Meeting after attending the last School Committee meeting. It was at that time that Feke learned that the school department's top priority was to alleviate overcrowded classrooms and minimize the need to redistrict some 40-plus elementary school children.
Upon finding that the town plans to receive nearly $898,000 in unanticipated funds over the next few months and already has $800,000 in stabilization funds, Feke saw an opportunity to minimize the impacts of the elementary school budget cuts before the school year begins next September.
Despite the predicted influx of funding, Ciccarello argued that nearly all of the stabilization account monies are earmarked for town expenditures. In addition, Stoneham resident Darin Leahy, who worked hand in hand with Feke to defeat last June's override ballot, warned that draining the town's reserve and savings accounts had already gotten the town into trouble once.
"This is bad fiscal policy, folks. This is what you already got into trouble for. Number one, 283 people are not 7000 people. It does a disservice to the people to have a Special Town Meeting in the middle of August," Leahy commented.
While Feke agrees that she had campaigned against last minute expenditures of savings and reserves during the override election, she believes it will take a significant period of time before reforms are implemented to streamline the process. And with some of the town's most innocent citizens becoming victims as the result of poor fiscal policy, Feke believes she's acting responsibly by requesting the August Town Meeting.
"Children are disenfranchised from the process. They can't go out to Town Hall and vote. So they're very vulnerable and unless people are willing to advocate for them, they're lost in the shuffle of the political process. Hopefully people will look beyond the partisan politics that have been controlling this town and look out for the welfare of innocent children," said Feke in a phone interview.
Claiming that the schools wouldn't be able to rehire teachers and assign them to classrooms by the start of the school year, Finance Board Chairman Richard Gregorio labeled the Town Meeting purpose as unproductive. Referring to a potential legal loophole allowing the Selectmen to deny a Special Town Meeting if the purpose was "unreasonable" - that Solomon had found in case law dating back to the early 1900's - the Finance Board Chairman appealed to the Selectmen to shoot down the meeting.
Bolstering Gregorio's argument, School Committee member David Sheils agreed that it might be difficult to accomplish the task of rehiring school teachers by the start of the school year.
While Sheils even hinted that the school system might decide to use the $300,000 in funds elsewhere in their budget, the school committee made it clear that they had not had the opportunity to discuss the petition on such short notice. However, according to Sheils, that didn't mean the schools would turn the money down should the article be approved.
"If it means more money for the school department, we wouldn't be doing our jobs if we refused. Our job is to educate the town's children," Sheils remarked.
Frustrated by the School Committee's neutral stance, Ciccarello countered that the schools should reject the article because it ignores the plight of municipal operations that have also faced severe cutbacks.
"I don't agree with that because all it does is divide the town. If there was an article here tonight that asked for $300,000 for the police department, I would say I don't support it because the schools deserve half of it. [You're] supporting it in a round-a-bout way," Ciccarello commented.
Firing back at Ciccarello, School Committee member Kristen Russo questioned how the town could say all funds are split 50-50 when the town had slated nearly all of the town's $800,000 in stabilization funds for municipal expenses.
Russo further criticized that move in light of the fact that nearly $400,000 of those earmarked funds were needed because of a botched vote at Town Meeting for the stabilization fund - a $285,000 Finance Board "goof up" - and a $143,000 budgeting error made by Town Administrator David Berry.
"I just really hope people realize that there's $800,000 in free cash we're trying to make up, not because of an error, but because of what I would call a major oversight," Russo said.
Russo's reference to the $800,000 in funds refers to three separate municipal needs, only one of which was planned to be addressed at October Town Meeting. That planned withdrawal amounts to $250,000 to bring the Police and Fire Departments overtime budgets up to levels needed to staff the safety offices throughout the year.
However, the remaining $428,000 was due to errors on the part of the Finance Board and Town Administrator, according to town officials.
At the Annual Town Meeting last May, the zero-override budget endorsed by the Selectmen called for withdrawing $600,000 in stabilization funds.
However, the Finance Board, in an attempt to prevent citizens from requesting that more funds be withdrawn from the savings account, erroneously called for $315,000 in stabilization monies to be withdrawn. With the Town Meeting audience following the advice of the board and voting only to withdraw the $315,000, the FY05 budget became $285,000 out of balance after June's override was voted down.
While citizens such as Darin Leahy and Oak Street resident Gilbert Feke challenged the error on the Town Meeting floor, both Finance Board members Richard Gregorio and John Warren made comments to the effect that their motion was very clear and represented the correct figure.
According to Town Accountant and newly appointed Town Administrator Ron Florino, the Fire Department's budget is also $143,000 out of whack because of a similar budgeting error where unemployment costs were pulled out of the safety offices budget.
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