Going forward from FY 2024, what is sustainable? (audio)

FM #1020 = This is the Franklin Matters radio show, number 1020 in the series. 

This session of the radio show shares the conversation with Town Administrator Jamie Hellen, Town Council Chair Tom Mercer, School Superintendent Lucas Giguere, and School Committee Chair Denise Spencer. 

We had our conversation at the Municipal Building on Tuesday June 27,2023. Tom Mercer joined via Zoom.  

Now that the major FY 2024 budget decisions are behind us, how we will go forward becomes the topic. The next steps start with the Joint Budget Subcommittee meeting scheduled for Aug 2. 

Over the next several months, lots of conversations, and planning discussion should result in a plan to go forward that the ad-hoc residents committee can then spread the word on for a potential override decision by the Town.

The conversation runs about 54 minutes. Let’s listen to the recording of the way forward discussion on Tuesday, June 27, 2023. Audio file -> https://franklin-ma-matters.captivate.fm/episode/fm-1020-fy2024-going-forward-06-27-23

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Town FY 2024 budget page -> https://www.franklinma.gov/town-budget/webforms/fy-24-budget-materials 

School FY 2024 budget information -> https://www.franklinps.net/fy24budget 

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We are now producing this in collaboration with Franklin.TV and Franklin Public Radio (wfpr.fm) or 102.9 on the Franklin area radio dial.  

This podcast is my public service effort for Franklin but we can't do it alone. We can always use your help.

How can you help?

• If you can use the information that you find here, please tell your friends and neighbors

• If you don't like something here, please let me know

Through this feedback loop we can continue to make improvements. I thank you for listening.

For additional information, please visit Franklinmatters.org/ or www.franklin.news/

If you have questions or comments you can reach me directly at shersteve @ gmail dot com

The music for the intro and exit was provided by Michael Clark and the group "East of Shirley". The piece is titled "Ernesto, manana"  c. Michael Clark & Tintype Tunes, 2008 and used with their permission.

I hope you enjoy!

------------------

You can also subscribe and listen to Franklin Matters audio on iTunes or your favorite podcast app; search in "podcasts" for "Franklin Matters"

Going forward from FY 2024, what is sustainable? (audio)

Town Council approves FY 24 budget after 9 hours over 2 nights, plan for schools to get $700K more (audio)

FM #1000 = This is the Franklin Matters radio show, number 1000 in the series. 

This session of the radio show shares the Town Council meeting held in Council Chambers on Thursday, May 25, 2023. All 9 members of the Council were present in the Council Chambers.

The first budget hearing did not complete on Wednesday evening, so Thursday's session opens to complete the first hearing and then starts the second hearing. When the second hearing completes, the legislation for action commences to record the various approvals as noted below.

Quick recap

• Police to add to their staff to alleviate a scheduling issue that should help reduce the overtime cost and help moral by reducing the amount of forced overtime

• Fire to add to their staff to help provide a third ambulance for coverage during four days of peak call volume. The staff increase is partially offset by additional ambulance revenues

• Senior Center gets approval for a van driver for half the year as a step towards full time 

• Town administration gets approval for a shift from an assistant town administrator to a Deputy Administrator along with a half year funding for an Arts & Culture Director

• The Franklin school budget gets an increase of approximately $700K over the $1.1m initially allocated. These funds will be part of a two resolution vote being scheduled for the June 7 Council meeting. 24 school personnel positions were cut this week by the School District to meet their expected budget shortfall of over $2M. Some of those are due to the continued declining enrollment, some of those can be restored with the additional funds being allocated. As was made clear a few times during the hearings, the Town Council only provides a line item of funding to the Schools. The School district and School Committee have the full responsibility for choices on how that money is spent

• The Joint Budget Subcommittee will begin meeting (schedule TBD) to work on a strategic plan to address the systemic issues across both the Town and Schools budget requirements. There was consensus on increasing the revenue. Some of the increase can come from a variety of measures (storm water fee, sewer rate increase, zoning changes to increase density, etc.) as well as consideration of a possible override ballot question. In order to get to the override question, the amount of increased revenue (i.e. property taxes revenue) needs to be explored and agreed to put before the taxpayers for their approval. There are already a number of increases planned (or expected) and that needs to be part of the consideration.

Planned

• storm water begins July 1, 2023

• sewer rate increase for next three years beginning July 1, 2023 to pay for the Beaver St interceptor replacement. Construction along RT 140 begins later this year

• possible debt exclusion for Tri-County RVTHS building replacement (amount expected in Aug 2023, vote anticipated in Oct 2023)

Expected

• water rate increase to pay for PFAS mitigations

• potential debt exclusion for renovation of Davis Thayer (DT) for town use (to make it ADA accessible). Decision on potential use anticipated by Dec 2023 from subcommittee appointed to determine recommendations

• potential debt exclusion for new Police station or renovation of existing, committee appointed and soon to begin work on this; their work will include the DT decision as applicable

• potential operational override to address systemic revenue issues

The recording runs about 3 hours and 42 minutes. Let’s listen to the Town Council meeting on May 25, 2023.  Audio file -> https://franklin-ma-matters.captivate.fm/episode/fm-1000-town-council-fy-24-budget-hearing-2-05-25-23

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The full agenda and documents associated with it can be found online ->    https://www.franklinma.gov/sites/g/files/vyhlif10036/f/agendas/may_25_2023_town_council_agenda_1.pdf

The Fy 2024 budget document folder ->

https://www.franklinma.gov/town-budget/webforms/fy-24-budget-materials 

The Franklin TV video replay for both sessions is available

• Wednesday -> https://www.youtube.com/live/P5MzuZ7r7gA?feature=share 

• Thursday -> https://www.youtube.com/live/BLXhaMDHJDk?feature=share 

My Twitter notes captured during the meetings can be found here

• Wednesday ->   https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hmk9G_oo0RXsmkV0KOiHADAXXgXbNGxk/view?usp=drive_link 

• Thursday ->   https://drive.google.com/file/d/1haEf0ELqCsOMNlz0labwYxe8yBtqsoN9/view?usp=drive_link 

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We are now producing this in collaboration with Franklin.TV and Franklin Public Radio (wfpr.fm) or 102.9 on the Franklin area radio dial.  

This podcast is my public service effort for Franklin but we can't do it alone. We can always use your help.

 

How can you help?

• If you can use the information that you find here, please tell your friends and neighbors

• If you don't like something here, please let me know

Through this feedback loop we can continue to make improvements. I thank you for listening.

For additional information, please visit Franklinmatters.org/ or www.franklin.news/

If you have questions or comments you can reach me directly at shersteve @ gmail dot com

The music for the intro and exit was provided by Michael Clark and the group "East of Shirley". The piece is titled "Ernesto, manana"  c. Michael Clark & Tintype Tunes, 2008 and used with their permission.

I hope you enjoy!

------------------

You can also subscribe and listen to Franklin Matters audio on iTunes or your favorite podcast app; search in "podcasts" for "Franklin Matters"

Town Council approves FY 24 budget after 9 hours over 2 nights, plan for schools to get $700K more (audio)

Override & debt exclusion info in the archives

Now that the "O" word (override) has been mentioned, there is a bunch of information in these  archives that may be useful to provide the historical perspective. 

Long time readers may recall that Franklin Matters came to be during the 2007 override and the domain officially was born in Nov 2007. 

The 2007 Override is noteworthy as it is the only successful override Franklin has passed in its history to date. It passed because there was unified support across the Town Council and School Committee. The succeeding overrides (2008 & 2010) failed because that unity did not exist. Some naysayers among the Council and School Committee created enough doubt and discord that success was unattainable. 

There also was a special ballot question on the State election of 2014 to provide $1.5 million to fund road maintenance that failed significantly. As it was a Sate election, Franklin turned out at 59% (normal for State elections) and 8289 voters said No, 3583 said Yes. https://www.franklinmatters.org/2014/10/ballot-question-5-dedicated-override-to.html

Coming out of the 2008 override failure there was recognition that a long term financial plan needed to be developed. A committee was created and began work on that in early 2010. The Financial Planning Committee changed to the Long Range Planning Committee. The first report they produced is now what we see each year when the Town Administrator publishes their 5 year outlook.

The Joint Budget Committee is the current working group to help with these long range and financial planning matters. They have not met frequently enough so we find ourselves now in a position where some folks understand the situation and many do not. The Joint Budget should meet more frequently (at least quarterly, in my view) rather than the annual meeting they have had in recent years.

The archive has links to collect the information pasted for each of the elections. 

• Franklin Override - 2007
• Franklin Override - 2008
• Franklin Override - 2010

There is also a spreadsheet with the specific ballot question history for both the debt exclusions (i.e. schools) and override votes. 

• Franklin Override - Debt Exclusion Vote History

Some of the links break as the Town and School pages were updated twice since then (and neither upgrade maintained link integrity). 

If you find a link that might be valuable for your research, let me know, I might have the individual document in my own archives and can find and update the link accordingly.

Additional archive links can be found in the Key Link tab https://www.franklinmatters.org/p/important-links.html

Lincoln St road work during Aug 2014

the budget season, Franklin's quality of life, and more are discussed in this episode of Talk Franklin (audio)

FM #997 = This is the Franklin Matters radio show, number 997 in the series. 

This session of the radio show shares my "Talk Franklin" session with Town Administrator Jamie Hellen. We had our conversation via Zoom on Thursday, May 11, 2023.  

Topics for this session

Budget season  FY 2024

Finance Committee budget hearings held May 8, 10, & 11

Town Council hearings scheduled for May 24 & 25

Quality of life

Town role vs community role for “O” (override) word

The recording runs about 27 minutes. Let’s listen to my conversation with Jamie on Thursday, May 11, 2023

Audio file -> https://franklin-ma-matters.captivate.fm/episode/fm-997-talk-franklin-05-11-23

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Town FY 2024 budget page -> https://www.franklinma.gov/town-budget/webforms/fy-24-budget-materials 

Town Administrator page -> https://www.franklinma.gov/administrator

Talk Franklin podcast page -> https://anchor.fm/letstalkfranklin 

--------------

We are now producing this in collaboration with Franklin.TV and Franklin Public Radio (wfpr.fm) or 102.9 on the Franklin area radio dial.  

This podcast is my public service effort for Franklin but we can't do it alone. We can always use your help.

How can you help?

• If you can use the information that you find here, please tell your friends and neighbors

• If you don't like something here, please let me know

Through this feedback loop we can continue to make improvements. I thank you for listening.

For additional information, please visit Franklinmatters.org/ or www.franklin.news/

If you have questions or comments you can reach me directly at shersteve @ gmail dot com

The music for the intro and exit was provided by Michael Clark and the group "East of Shirley". The piece is titled "Ernesto, manana"  c. Michael Clark & Tintype Tunes, 2008 and used with their permission.

I hope you enjoy!

------------------

You can also subscribe and listen to Franklin Matters audio on iTunes or your favorite podcast app; search in "podcasts" for "Franklin Matters"

the budget season, Franklin's quality of life, and more are discussed in this episode of Talk Franklin (audio)

Town Council approves all alcohol license, hears of Tri-County building plans, ok's purchase of Tower truck, & more (audio)

 FM #934 = This is the Franklin Matters radio show, number 934 in the series. 

This session of the radio show shares the Town Council meeting held in Council Chambers on Wednesday, February 1, 2023. All 9 members of the Council were present in the Council Chambers.

Quick recap:

• New firefighter/paramedic Kristin Krauss was sworn in. William Blanchard, was sworn in for his promotion to EMS Battalion Chief

• The 'plus one' all alcohol license request approved in October to send to the Legislature did get the home rule petition passed and came back for Council approval. Confusion around a public hearing and several objections from neighbors and nearby business swayed only one Councilor as the measure passed 8-1

• Tri-county Regional Voc Tec representatives told the community of the plans underway to build a new school which will require an override vote likely in October. Numbers are still being worked to get to a potential MSBA approval in August and then the vote in October. Stay tuned - from the MSBA decision date, Tri-County has 120 days to get a vote by the regional communities.

• The Council authorized the purchase of a new Tower truck for the Fire Dept. The loan won't start until the truck arrives which could be 2-3 years from now. Due to that timing, it was urgent to get the order in now to avoid further costs, and to ensure we have support for the existing unit, which is a critical piece of equipment for the Departments emergency response

The recording runs 2 and 38 minutes. Let’s listen to the Town Council meeting on February 1, 2023. Audio file -> https://franklin-ma-matters.captivate.fm/episode/fm-934-franklin-ma-town-council-mtg-02-01-23

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The full agenda can be found ->   https://www.franklinma.gov/sites/g/files/vyhlif6896/f/agendas/feb_1_2023_town_council_agenda.pdf 

The Franklin TV video is available for replay -> https://www.youtube.com/live/-AQpq8GSvi4?feature=share 

My notes taken during the meeting can be found ->   https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MLzZ-p3wLBMFVmnHUHuxzl3xdT0jWQO6/view?usp=share_link 

--------------

We are now producing this in collaboration with Franklin.TV and Franklin Public Radio (wfpr.fm) or 102.9 on the Franklin area radio dial.  

This podcast is my public service effort for Franklin but we can't do it alone. We can always use your help.

 

How can you help?

• If you can use the information that you find here, please tell your friends and neighbors

• If you don't like something here, please let me know

Through this feedback loop we can continue to make improvements. I thank you for listening.

For additional information, please visit Franklinmatters.org/ or www.franklin.news/

If you have questions or comments you can reach me directly at shersteve @ gmail dot com

The music for the intro and exit was provided by Michael Clark and the group "East of Shirley". The piece is titled "Ernesto, manana"  c. Michael Clark & Tintype Tunes, 2008 and used with their permission.

I hope you enjoy!

------------------

You can also subscribe and listen to Franklin Matters audio on iTunes or your favorite podcast app; search in "podcasts" for "Franklin Matters"

Tri-county Regional Voc Tec representatives (l-r) Peter Wiernicki, Karen McGuire, Dan Haynes 

Talking about "Train Town Franklin" with Scott Mason (audio)

FM #892 = This is the Franklin Matters radio show, number 892 in the series. 

This shares my conversation with current Historical Commission member Scott Mason. Scott is a former three term Town Councilor with a lifelong passion for model railroads. 

Scott is designing and building a diorama of the uptown area of the Franklin train station, circa 1932 for this first phase. Our conversation via conference bridge explores some of his Franklin story and then gets into the development of this first of a series of dioramas. We talk about the research, interesting findings, decisions on scale, etc.

The exhibit is scheduled to open Dec 18, 2022 and run through Feb 2, 2023 at the Historical Museum. The museum is open on Saturdays (10 AM to 1 PM), and Sundays (1 PM to 4 PM) during winter.

Our conversation runs about 30 minutes. Let’s listen to my conversation with Scott and his work on “Train Town Franklin” recorded Dec 5, 2022

Audio file -> https://franklin-ma-matters.captivate.fm/episode/fm-892-train-town-franklin-with-scott-mason-12-05-22

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Historical Museum notification on "Train Town Franklin" 

https://www.franklinmatters.org/2022/12/train-town-franklin-scheduled-to-arrive.html

Scott’s model railroad page on Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/people/wwwScottyMasoncom/100063840514784/

The Heather McCarron article in Dec 2007 on “Model railroads are Mason's passion’ (subscription may be required) 

https://www.milforddailynews.com/story/news/2007/12/23/model-railroads-are-mason-s/41390388007/

From deep in the archives, my prior recordings with Scott

Sep 2009  https://www.franklinmatters.org/2009/09/fm-46-scott-mason.html

June 2010 (prep for override vote - which failed)   50 minutes split into 2 parts https://www.franklinmatters.org/2010/05/fm-69-scott-mason-part-1-of-2.html

https://www.franklinmatters.org/2010/05/fm-69-b-scott-mason-part-2-of-2.html

--------------

We are now producing this in collaboration with Franklin.TV and Franklin Public Radio (wfpr.fm) or 102.9 on the Franklin area radio dial.  

This podcast is my public service effort for Franklin but we can't do it alone. We can always use your help.

How can you help?

• If you can use the information that you find here, please tell your friends and neighbors

• If you don't like something here, please let me know

Through this feedback loop we can continue to make improvements. I thank you for listening.

For additional information, please visit Franklinmatters.org/ or www.franklin.news/

If you have questions or comments you can reach me directly at shersteve @ gmail dot com

The music for the intro and exit was provided by Michael Clark and the group "East of Shirley". The piece is titled "Ernesto, manana"  c. Michael Clark & Tintype Tunes, 2008 and used with their permission.

I hope you enjoy!

------------------

You can also subscribe and listen to Franklin Matters audio on your favorite podcast app; search in "podcasts" for "Franklin Matters"

Talking about "Train Town Franklin" with Scott Mason (audio)