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GRAFTON, Mass. – The facility upgrades to the Municipal Center and school buildings, known as article 13 on the Grafton Town Meeting warrant, were passed Monday night by a two-thirds majority vote at town meeting.
It took about an hour for the article to be discussed and settled. This was a significant victory to the Board of Selectmen, which proposed a similar plan in the spring which narrowly failed at a special Town Meeting. Monday night's vote was not supported by the finance committee, which believed that the funding sources, primarily from presumed surplus dollars from the high school project, were untested and might create a greater debt to the town.
Selectman David Ross summed up his argument for the passage by saying, “This problem is not going away. If this doesn’t pass, we will have to come back to you next May and that will probably mean a tax increase.”
The issue, to spend $6.5 million to upgrade windows, roofs and heating systems is to be paid largely by town savings, rebates and savings from the high school project surplus. The balance of about $3.8 million would be borrowed.
“There is a strong likelihood the $1.3 million high school surplus might not be there,” said state Rep. George Peterson, who echoed the sentiments of the finance committee.
Ross agreed that the surplus is not guaranteed but that they can make up any differences along the way.
Dominique Ross, a Grafton resident, put a different spin on the evening discussion.
“What would you do if you had a leaky roof and were facing another bad New England winter?" she asked. "We can wait or we can punish ourselves. We should bite the bullet.”
The article passed with sound backing from the attendees, many whom agreed that the buildings were in dire need of repair and that the energy savings, guaranteed by Honeywell at 31.75 percent, would be a good investment.
Comments (8)
Who will mange Honeywell and approve payments of invoices and make sure the work is done according to the "plans"? We have always had building committees for this type of work so they was full and open disclosure. The committees have been made of volunteers and some with industry knowledge. Now what?
A proposed amendment for a budgetary line item that covers maintenance of all of these buildings was ruled out of order. This is too bad. The need is so obvious. I respect the rules of TM, but it is sad that Town Meeting is so rigid that we cannot adopt these very obvious requirements. The BoS acknowledged that maintenance has NOT been done, thus the buildings are suffering. I attended one of the outreach meetings and the BoS members and ATA promised that there would be such a budget requirement. But, once again, this was not acknowledged at Town Meeting. I hope a very clear maintenance line item will show up in the next budget.
I'd prefer to see more money go to the roads, but at least we're talking about keeping our existing buildings in good shape rather than waiting to replace them when they collapse in disrepair.
However, repairs like this will quickly add up if we don't plan and prioritize as a town and look at the big picture. I think we need a formal MASTER PLAN for new facility and infrastructure spending for the next decade or two. I may be wrong, but to me it seems that picking each project independent of the other needs seems a little too haphazard. We can't afford not to plan and coordinate these expenses.
Seriously? The town votes for this no problem, even against the advice of the finance committee, and yet the library gets voted down? The library building is even older than the Muni Center, and also quite out-dated, and also serves the community like the Muni Center does. I'm still surprised that the town's residents voted to have their tax money spent chopping away library space to make it ADA-accessible rather than to have their tax money spent making it ADA-accessible AND updated to better serve them, their children, and their neighbors. I agree with Graftonbadboy... the town seems pretty backwards to me.
It doesn't make sense to me. I'd rather have seen the $6.5 mil go to the library if I knew we were going to spend it anyway.
That's why I think we need to stop looking at these things in a vacuum. It's not really a choice of "Library" or "No Library", it's a choice of "Library" or "Muni Center" or "Roadways".
Our town is not "YES or NO" and it is not in a vacuum, so why are we voting this way?
Here's an idea--
1. Identify all upcoming projects.
2. Categorize as High, Medium, or Low.
3. Set up 3 ballot-style questions, one for each category
4. Have citizens cast a vote for one project in each category.
5. Assign funds in each category according to vote ranking.
Just a thought...
Some of the savings are real, some are theoretical savings. When you borrow today, against future operating budgets, not tax revenue, your in for some pain in future budgets. The schools will bear this burden the most because they are the elephant in the room, but other operating budgets will also get tightened further. I think the finance committee was right in their judgment.
The good news is that the timing is good, because Obama is printing money and certainly the outcome of that will be higher inflation. So getting our town's capital expenses done now has some merit.
Graftonbadboy, you should read the warrant articles for Town Meeting. We voted CPC money for a study to create a new super park on Worcester Street at the site of the old school.
Why don't we replace the kids super park ??? If the town can find $6.5 million for an upgrade on a building.. The town can certainly find the money to build the super park.. This town is so backwards now. I like old Grafton better.