FINANCIAL PLANNING COMMITTEE September 4, 2008

FINANCIAL PLANNING COMMITTEE
September 4, 2008
The meeting was called to order at 7:05 pm

Members present: Finance Committee Chair James Roche,
Councilors Deborah Bartlett, Steve Whalen and Shannon Zollo (arrived at 8:09pm)
Finance Committee member Rebecca Cameron,
Residents, Doug Hardesty and Gwynne Wilschek.

Members not in attendance: School Committee Members, Roberta Trahan and Matt
Kelley.

Also present were Town Administrator Jeff Nutting, and School Superintendent Wayne
Ogden and residents Jim Gianotti, Stacey Bower and Steve Sherlock.

Minutes reviewed by Committee for June 11, 2008, July 10, 2008 and August 7, 2008

Motion by Councilor Bartlett to Approve
Vote: Yes 9
No 0

Goal Discussion:

The Committee discussed:

• Maintaining same level of service may require an override
• Override – What it is going to cost

The group discussed the budget and decided to look at large expense drivers such as

• General Government
• Education
• DPW
• Questionnaire from Jeff Nutting to Departments

Jeff Nutting will meet with Department Heads to discuss budget and arrange for them to
meet with the Committee. (two per meeting)

The Committee also discussed cost of living percentage, inflation, health insurance. They
agreed that local government not sustainable in current mode.

Schools discussion:

• School had more layoffs than other departments
• School Choice Funds
• High School Renovations
• Enrollment
• SPED

Range of Decisions for School Committee:

• 2-3 yr Commitment other spending
• Are fixed costs coming up
• High School trajectory is toward probation (NEASC)
• Resources into High School

Other Departments that need funding discussed:

• Police
• Fire
• Library
• DPW

Next meeting will have budget spreadsheets and two Department heads will attend.

Comments from visitors:

• Good ideas to review Department Heads budget (metric w?
• Stick with main points
• Like to see more residents involved and at meetings
• Commends Committee for efforts

Next Meeting scheduled for September 18, 2008

Next Agenda – (tentatively)

• Public Safety
• DPW and Facilities
• Fixed Costs
• Library

Meeting adjourned

Respectfully,
Jeff Nutting

FINANCIAL PLANNING COMMITTEE September 18, 2008

FINANCIAL PLANNING COMMITTEE
September 18, 2008

The meeting was called to order at 7:03 pm by Vice Chair Doug Hardesty.

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

Members not in attendance: Finance Chair Jim Roche and Councilor Shannon Zollo.

Town Administrator Jeff Nutting handed out a spreadsheet of the fiscal model and
reviewed the initial assumptions.

Fire Chief McCarraher presented his model for the department. He explained that his
model is based on response time and trends in the number of times the department
responds to emergencies in a given year. The model is based on a 4% growth rate, but
currently, the trends are flat so that his proposal could be moved out a few years.

He explained the attempted regionalization of dispatch and the barriers that prevented a
successful implementation. He also discussed staffing the department both in terms of
firefighting and ambulance calls. The ambulance produces about $700,000 a year in
revenue. $125,000 is set aside for ambulance replacement and the rest is turned over to
the general fund.

Police Chief Williams discussed his request for additional staffing that would return the
department to 2000 levels. The department has been able to “hold their own” with the use
of technology and the hard work of the staff. However, demand is increasing on all
fronts. Franklin’s staffing is well below comparative communities, as well as our per
capita spending on police. On any given shift, they can be shorthanded when an
emergency arises. They do belong to a regional police group for large-scale issues but
have insufficient staff for the daily demands on the department.

He requested two additional officers in FY 10 and on additional officer the following two
years.

Meeting adjourned at 8:30 pm

Take the civics quiz

Are you more knowledgeable than the average citizen? The average score for all 2,508 Americans taking the following test was 49%; college educators scored 55%. Can you do better? Questions were drawn from past ISI surveys, as well as other nationally recognized exams.

The 35 question quiz can be found here

Let me know how you did and we can compare scores.

Send an email to me (shersteve at gmail dot com) or leave a comment.

Do your teens drink?

Would you know if your teens drink?

That the local police are on the alert to watch for teen drinking given the Taylor Meyer tragedy is quite appropriate.

A traffic stop on King St Saturday evening resulted in five arrests for drinking and possession of liquor by 17 and 18 year-olds. The MetroWest Health Survey was good in detailing how pervasive drinking is amongst the teenagers.

What we as a community will do about this problem to prevent additional tragedies remains to be seen.

One effort underway is WASTED, When Alcohol Starts To Effect Decisions, is being held Tuesday evening, December 2, 7:00 PM at Franklin High School.

Be there.
The teens in Franklin matter!

"This is really the kickoff with Franklin"

Town officials are forging ahead with plans to renovate Franklin's aging high school building, while realizing that the economy's downturn could affect their ability to pay for the project.

The town submitted a refreshed proposal to the Massachusetts School Building Authority this month, specifying problems with the 37-year-old building and providing additional details on enrollment projections, the educational goals of a potential renovation, and past examples of the town's commitment to building maintenance.

In addition, several Franklin officials, including Town Administrator Jeffrey Nutting and Town Council chairman Chris Feeley, met with the building authority's executive director, Katherine Craven, to identify Franklin's most pressing needs. Craven called the encounter "very positive."

Read the full article in the Boston Sunday Globe West section here

"We have to be faithful to our basics"

An earsplitting clanging echoed from the stone bell tower of Mount St. Mary's Abbey in Wrentham, calling to prayer about a dozen nuns ending their morning shift in the convent's Candy House.

The sisters, wrapped in work clothes and aprons, walked down a wooded path and through a clearing as they made their silent way home. By noon, they were wearing the crisp, white robes of their contemplative Cistercian order, and had joined 40 others to chant and pray inside the abbey's airy church.

Up at 3, pray and work all day, retire at 8.

So it goes for these nuns and others in the order that for 900 years has emulated St. Benedict in relying on one's hands for daily sustenance.

Here in Wrentham, off a country lane not far from Interstate 495, that means tending a flock of sheep for wool to make blankets and growing a bounty of fresh vegetables in the summer, and, for these sisters who are rarely seen in public, making Trappistine Quality Candy - and lots of it.

Read the full article in the Boston Sunday Globe West section here

The Abbey web site can be found here

You can order candy via their online web store or make a donation via PayPal.

Postings about the Abbey's wind turbine can be found here

Whoosh Whoosh

Image via Wikipedia

What if some nuns in Wrentham decided to put up a wind turbine? And then high school officials in Worcester? And a Canton bank chairman? And pretty soon, the question wasn't where do wind farms belong, but how many windmills can we squeeze in to every last available space? That day is coming.

.....

"Wind power is part of that," Schulte says. "It seems to be peppered all over society right now: green, green, green. Well, this is green. This is clean energy. This is 20 years of energy with no emissions. Twenty years of energy with no pollution you have to bury in the ground. I think that's all right."

.....

Remember the nuns? Their turbine -- another SED project -- is scheduled to be built this winter. And Sister Mariann Garrity, for one, can't wait for the moment she sees those pearly white blades spinning. "The wind is just something that we've let caress our faces," she says. "It was not something, up until now, that we had learned how to harness. And when we see that turbine go up, we'll know that we are using a gift of creation in a much more effective way."

It's just like the nuns pray on Sundays. Gathered together, all 50 of them, they thank the Lord for the rain and the dew, for the heat of summer and the cold of winter. They give thanks for the seas and the rivers and the beasts, wild and tame. And they give thanks, of course, for the wind blowing outside the abbey, just waiting for a turbine to spin. "All you winds," they say together, quoting from the book of Daniel, "bless the Lord."

Read the full article in the Boston Globe Magazine here

Previous posting about the Abbey's wind project can be found here and here