Financial Planning Committee Minutes - 11/20/08

FINANCIAL PLANNING COMMITTEE
November 20,2008

The meeting was called to order at 7:05 pm

Members present: Finance Committee members James Roche, and Rebecca Cameron, Councilors Deborah Bartlett and Steve Whalen. School Committee Members, Roberta Trahan and Matt Kelley. Residents, Doug Hardesty and Gwynne Wilschek.

Also present were Town Administrator Jeff Nutting, School Superintendent Wayne Ogden and School Finance Director Miriam Goodman.

Motion to accept the minutes of October 16, 2008 by Councilor Bartlett.
Second by Roberta Trahan
Vote: Yes all

The Superintendent of Schools gave an in depth review of the FY 10 budget requests.
The Schools will need a 6.45% increase or $3.2 million to maintain the level of service.
They would also need an additional $600,000 for the next five-years to restore the reductions in force over the last several years.

The School budget is 83% personnel costs, while SPED and health insurance make up a large portion of the remaining budget.

The Committee asks questions in attempts to understand the barriers and any potential ideas.

The meeting adjourned at 9:05 pm

Respectfully,

Jeff Nutting

"There's really been a culture change"

Over the past decade, Revere has seen significant statistical drops in the percentage of middle school and high school students who use and abuse alcohol, coinciding with what local officials, parents, and students themselves say has been a shift in attitudes about drinking.

That's no accident. Since 1997, Massachusetts General Hospital and Partners HealthCare have spent $4.4 million to fund a program called Revere CARES, designed to reduce teen drinking and substance abuse in a community where adults themselves abused alcohol and drugs at considerably higher rates than the state as a whole.

....

The data show particular improvement among middle schoolers' behavior in the five years since Revere CARES launched a campaign called the "Power of Know," which included getting more than 1,000 parents of adolescents to sign cards pledging to talk with their children about alcohol, tobacco, and drugs, listen to their kids, and get to know their children's friends and their parents.

Bold for my emphasis

Read the full article in the Boston Globe here

Teacher Resources - Lab Out Loud

For science teachers and those interested in science, Lab Out Loud is a wonderful resource.

Why?
It highlights other good resources within the world of science.

For example: The Periodic Table of Videos hosted by the University of Nottingham



Enjoy!

stone tree in snow

stone tree in snow, originally uploaded by shersteve.

It is good to walk your route in reverse.

As many times as I have passed this tree, I was always coming the other way and never noticed the fine stone work where a limb once was.

Go the other way for a change.

Enjoy!

Prop 2 1/2 Limits Growth

This posting was originally made on June 26, 2008. Since that time, there has been an extended conversation going on in the comments. In order to bring those comments more to the light, I am updating this to bring it forward from the June archives.

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HIDDEN CONSEQUENCES: LESSONS FROM MASSACHUSETTS FOR STATES CONSIDERING A PROPERTY TAX CAP, is a report issued by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in May. In part, it summarizes:

“Across Massachusetts, a number of communities have been forced to lay off teachers, police officers, firefighters, and other public employees; close fire stations; shut libraries, senior centers, and recreation centers or sharply reduce their hours; and scale back public school programs. One town even turned off its street lights to save money,” said Iris Lav, the Center’s deputy director and co-author of the report.

According to the report, Proposition 2 ½, which limits the growth in communities’ property tax revenue for all services including education to 2.5 percent a year, has:

• Arbitrarily constrained local revenues without considering the actual cost of providing services. “The fundamental problem with property tax caps is that they don’t make public services any less expensive,” said Lav. ”Costs like employee health insurance and special education are largely beyond localities’ control, and they’re rising much faster than the cap allows. Nor does the cap hold down the cost of heating buildings and operating school buses when oil prices are skyrocketing.” When these things occur, as they have in Massachusetts, other services have to be cut to fit total expenditures under the cap.

Read the full posting on the Franklin School Committee blog

Read the full report as referenced here.

"It's still under investigation"

By Heather McCarron/Daily News staff

GHS

Posted Dec 19, 2008 @ 09:20 PM

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NORTH ATTLEBOROUGH —

A 21-year-old North Attleborough man stands accused of buying rum that was later given to Taylor Meyer, the Plainville teen who died in October after wandering away from an underage drinking party at the old Norfolk Airport, according to police.

Sean P. Flynn, of 269 West St., is charged with procuring alcohol for a person under 21 and is scheduled for a show-cause hearing on Dec. 24 at Attleboro District Court.

"There was no arrest. He was served with a summons," said North Attleborough Police Chief Michael P. Gould Sr., noting the summons was served Dec. 17.

Gould said a clerk magistrate will determine at the hearing whether there is probable cause to issue a criminal complaint and send the case to court.

Flynn stands accused of obtaining two bottles of Baccardi rum for Brian Zuzick, 19, of 6 Red Coat Lane, Plainville, who then passed one bottle on to 17-year-old Taylor Meyer and the second to an unidentified, 17-year-old classmate of Meyer's, police allege.

Read the full story in the Milford Daily News here

WASTED - FHS Student presentation

Here is the PowerPoint slide show that was the backdrop for the FHS student performance at the information session hosted by W.A.S.T."E"D. on December 2, 2008.

WASTED - Franklin (MA) High School

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: school drinking)

The audio files from the WASTED evening can be found here

My thanks to Maruska Waters and Principal Pam Gould for sharing this presentation.