The Franklin Police just made a brief video available as they continue their search for the suspect in the robbery of the Tedeschi's at the corner of Union/King Sts.
Franklin, MA: Attempt to identify armed robbery suspect depicted in video. Please call FPD Detectives if you know who this is. 1-508-528-1212
Friday, March 26, 2010
Franklin, MA: Master Plan
The Department of Planning and Community Development (DPCD) is in the preliminary planning process to update the Town's 1997 Master Plan. The DPCD is currently creating a Master Plan outline that will act as a guideline for the next 12-18 months during the completion of the Master Plan. After this guideline is reviewed and approved by the Planning Board, Town Council and Town Administration, the DPCD will begin work on the Master Plan, which will include the formation of a Master Plan committee. The Committee is likely to be formed in the Spring of 2010 and will need volunteers from the Franklin Community. Please check back regularly for updated information regarding the status of the Master Plan process as well as future ways to leave public comments regarding the Master Planning process.
WHAT IS A MASTER PLAN?
According to Chapter 41 Section 81D of the General Laws of Massachusetts a Master Plan is:
“A statement through text, maps, illustrations or other forms of communication, that is designed to provide a basis for decision making regarding the long-term physical development of the municipality…”
A Master Plan consists of the following elements as defined by the M.G.L. Chapter 41 Section 81D.
- Land Use
- Housing
- Economic Development
- Circulation
- Open Space and Recreation
- Natural, Cultural and Historic Resources
- Community Services and Facilities
- Goals and Policies
- Implementation
The information above was from the Franklin Planning and Community Development Master Plan page on the Town website
Franklin, MA
Franklin, MA: Absentee ballots available - Precincts 2, 3 and 4 only
ABSENTEE BALLOTS ARE NOW AVAILABLE AT THE TOWN CLERK’S OFFICE.
ONLY PRECINCTS 2, 3, AND 4 ARE ELIGIBLE TO VOTE
Absentee Ballot Information: Absentee ballots are now available in the Town Clerk’s office. A registered voter who will be unable to vote at the polls on election day due to the following reasons may vote absentee up to 12:00 noon the day before the election:
- absence from your city or town during normal polling hours; or
- physical disability preventing you from going to the polling place; or
- Religious belief.
TOWN OF FRANKLIN ELECTION NOTICE
SPECIAL STATE PRIMARY ELECTION
DATE: TUESDAY, April 13, 2010
TIME: 6:00a.m. – 8:00p.m.
PLACE: FRANKLIN HIGH SCHOOL FIELDHOUSE ON OAK STREET
ALL PRECINCTS
Franklin, MA
2nd Fund Raising Event for Abbey Candy House
FRIENDS of the ABBEY
In
In
SPORTS AND SONG
Come join with us in Sports
MATT LIGHT
PATRIOTS Offensive Tackle
(Six Division Championships, Four Conference Titles,
Three Super Bowl Championships)
Three Super Bowl Championships)
AUTOGRAPH SIGNING – PATRIOTS MEMORABILIA
Come join with us in Song
AYLA BROWN
– former American Idol finalist from season 5:
(Boston College Eagles Basketball)
(Boston College Eagles Basketball)
SILENT AUCTIONS, RAFFLES, DOOR PRIZE
ADMISSION: ADULTS $10.00
Children Free - Cash/Checks only
Where: Lake Pearl Luciano’s
When: April 11, 2010
2:00 to 4:00 P.M.
Creek St., Wrentham, Ma.
Mt. St. Mary’s Abbey – 300 Arnold St. – Wrentham, Ma. 02093
Phone: 508 528 1282 Web www.msmabbey.org
Boston Globe West: Schools put clamps on bullying
Sent to you by Steve Sherlock via Google Reader:
via Boston Globe -- Globe West by Rachel Lebeaux, Globe Correspondent on 3/24/10
In response to high-profile bullying incidents in other communities and in advance of pending state legislation, school officials in Franklin have set up an antibullying task force, making it the latest local district to tackle the sensitive issue.
Things you can do from here:
- Subscribe to Boston Globe -- Globe West using Google Reader
- Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites
To be fair to the efforts of the Community Health Council that are and have been underway in this space for sometime, this is an 'extra' effort by the School Committee.
The Community Health Council has been active in this space with great progress being made particularly in the cyberbullying arena with Teenangels. Teenangels is a group of Franklin middle school students who under the guidance of
Lisa Keohane have been getting formal training, developed a questionnaire, an anti-bullying pledge, visited the State House and are about to take their efforts to students throughout the Franklin school system.
Additional information about the Community Health Council efforts can be found here.
The full and current Community Health Council "action plan" can be found here:
http://www.franklin.k12.ma.us/co/Debbie/Community%20Health%20Council/2009-2010%20CHC%20Action%20Plan%20March.pdf
Thursday, March 25, 2010
That's not cool!
That's Not Cool is a website designed to teach young adults that online and mobile phone behavior is real behavior with real consequences. That's Not Cool has three primary features; videos, discussion forum, and call out cards. The video section features video clips called Two Sided Stories. Two Sided Stories use puppets and stop motion to portray examples of cyber stalking. The discussion forum is called Talk It Out. In Talk It Out students can comment on stories and exchange comments about issues around cyber behavior. Call Out Cards are small posters featuring slogans and statements about cyber stalking behavior. Call Out Cards can be downloaded from That's Not Cool. In addition to the three main features, That's Not Cool provides students with resources and contacts if they think they are in an abusive relationship or are being cyber stalked.
The videos are cool. They are also interactive in that the choices at the end of each lead to other videos!
Have you talked about cyberbullying with your teen?
Thanks to Mr Byrne at Free Technology for Teachers for the link to this site.
Franklin, MA
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Live reporting - Financial Planning Committee
Present: Jim Roche, Scott Mason, Sue Rohrbach, Steve Whalen, Doug Hardesty, Deb Bartlett, Brendan Morrison, Jeff Nutting, Shannon Zollo (late)
Absent: Roberta Trahan, Rebecca Cameron
Oct 8th 2009 minutes to be approved, motion to approve, passed.
Motion for Doug Hardesty to be chair, seconded, passed
Held off on other positions until some of the paperwork gets through to make the revisions to the committee "official".
The mix of the committee will now be
First objective of this meeting to hear from Jeff Nutting on the budget update and start from there
estimated total revenues
The FY 11 numbers are based upon Senate numbers, House numbers have not yet been released
overall 4% decline with local receipts and state aid
State Aid maybe a little higher with local receipts a little lower
Will have a better handle in 2-3 weeks when Legislature makes some decisions
House Ways/Means budget usually available around school vacation
Usually the House number doesn't get lower so it can be used as a baseline
Total Town deficit currently about 3.3 to 3.5M (combined Town and Schools)
The FY 10 budget has the deferred cost of living increase (COLA) wage increase for the brief portion of June for the last pay period into July 1. The FY 11 does not have anything currently budgeted for COLA increases for any of the "to be negotiated" agreements with the bargaining units.
Town departmental budgets will be coming in flat with increases only in areas where known expenses have increased (i.e. gasoline cost up $100,000 over last year).
Positions where folks have left (resigned) have not been re-filled with new folks.
Steve Whalen provides an update on his spreadsheet with the comparisons amongst the 31 communities
Franklin is 3 of 31 in population growth; Hopkinton for example grew at a faster rate although less in total.
Franklin is 22 of 31 for per pupil spending, 9,995; 2 years later up only $400 but sunk to 28th
- Wrentham needs to be looked at, it maybe a K-8 district (i.e. King Phillip Regional has the high school)
Franklin was 13th for teacher salary, now we are at 5th (due to the teacher reductions on the lower end of the salary scale). The School Board has also acknowledged keeping the teachers in a competitive position as that affects the student performance in the classroom
2009 property tax bill 22nd then, 22nd now
residential tax burden was 25th, still 25th
to give a general sense of how much debt we have, we haven't changed position, hence we are well managed
Franklin is 20% below the medium on tax burden but we are 76% above the medium on State aid returned to the community! This is the significant issue that will hurt us until we lessen our dependence upon State Aid.
the next two sheets break out by towns with single vs. split tax rates
the consequences of the decision to remain with a single tax rate need to be fully understood.
we are ranked 11th on tax rate for communities where they do have a split tax rate.
we are ranked 12th on tax rate for communities with a single tax rate
we have a lower tax burden and lower tax rate against comparable communities with either a single or split tax rate.
we are trying to do something that is impossible, to have a really low tax rate and a high quality of living
we are a well run, efficient, lean town that doesn't have a lot of taxes.
27 communities are sacrificing more (i.e. paying higher taxes) to get less results (i.e. MCAS performance) than we are getting
the biggest exposure we have is our reliance on State Aid.
need to find a way to make these numbers human readable
After Steve's update the discussion turned to overall process:
What is the timing for bringing this to the Town Council as part of the budget process?
Should be ready for the Apr 28th meeting
next meeting 3/31/10 7:00 PM
Franklin, MA
Absent: Roberta Trahan, Rebecca Cameron
Oct 8th 2009 minutes to be approved, motion to approve, passed.
Motion for Doug Hardesty to be chair, seconded, passed
Held off on other positions until some of the paperwork gets through to make the revisions to the committee "official".
The mix of the committee will now be
- 3 members of the Town Council (Mason, Whalen, Zollo)
- 2 from the Finance Committee (Roche, Cameron)
- 2 from the School Committee (Trahan, Rohrbach)
- 3 citizens (Bartlett, Hardesty, Morrison)
First objective of this meeting to hear from Jeff Nutting on the budget update and start from there
estimated total revenues
- FY 09 - 88.3
- FY 10 - 89.0
- FY 11 - 88.6
The FY 11 numbers are based upon Senate numbers, House numbers have not yet been released
overall 4% decline with local receipts and state aid
State Aid maybe a little higher with local receipts a little lower
Will have a better handle in 2-3 weeks when Legislature makes some decisions
House Ways/Means budget usually available around school vacation
Usually the House number doesn't get lower so it can be used as a baseline
Total Town deficit currently about 3.3 to 3.5M (combined Town and Schools)
The FY 10 budget has the deferred cost of living increase (COLA) wage increase for the brief portion of June for the last pay period into July 1. The FY 11 does not have anything currently budgeted for COLA increases for any of the "to be negotiated" agreements with the bargaining units.
Town departmental budgets will be coming in flat with increases only in areas where known expenses have increased (i.e. gasoline cost up $100,000 over last year).
Positions where folks have left (resigned) have not been re-filled with new folks.
Steve Whalen provides an update on his spreadsheet with the comparisons amongst the 31 communities
Franklin is 3 of 31 in population growth; Hopkinton for example grew at a faster rate although less in total.
Franklin is 22 of 31 for per pupil spending, 9,995; 2 years later up only $400 but sunk to 28th
- Wrentham needs to be looked at, it maybe a K-8 district (i.e. King Phillip Regional has the high school)
Franklin was 13th for teacher salary, now we are at 5th (due to the teacher reductions on the lower end of the salary scale). The School Board has also acknowledged keeping the teachers in a competitive position as that affects the student performance in the classroom
2009 property tax bill 22nd then, 22nd now
residential tax burden was 25th, still 25th
to give a general sense of how much debt we have, we haven't changed position, hence we are well managed
Franklin is 20% below the medium on tax burden but we are 76% above the medium on State aid returned to the community! This is the significant issue that will hurt us until we lessen our dependence upon State Aid.
the next two sheets break out by towns with single vs. split tax rates
the consequences of the decision to remain with a single tax rate need to be fully understood.
we are ranked 11th on tax rate for communities where they do have a split tax rate.
we are ranked 12th on tax rate for communities with a single tax rate
we have a lower tax burden and lower tax rate against comparable communities with either a single or split tax rate.
we are trying to do something that is impossible, to have a really low tax rate and a high quality of living
we are a well run, efficient, lean town that doesn't have a lot of taxes.
27 communities are sacrificing more (i.e. paying higher taxes) to get less results (i.e. MCAS performance) than we are getting
the biggest exposure we have is our reliance on State Aid.
need to find a way to make these numbers human readable
After Steve's update the discussion turned to overall process:
- What annual date should we have as a target to update the full set of numbers?
- How do we incorporate an update with what the forecasted numbers were? need to tell the story on the reconciliation (where we were vs where we are)
- Extend the analysis by a year.
- Need to also update the progress on the action items
What is the timing for bringing this to the Town Council as part of the budget process?
Should be ready for the Apr 28th meeting
next meeting 3/31/10 7:00 PM
Franklin, MA
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