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Budget Time and ……..
The calendar year is drawing to a close and 2001 in Walpole will
be remembered for many things.
Foremost for some will be the struggle to balance the budget and
the two separate and different override votes that culminated in
September with the approval of an additional $3.7 million to
provide necessary services in the town.
After the dust settled, and the tax rate was calculated, and after
a town wide reassessment, the town is now looking to see how to
stabilize the budget process and ease the increase on taxes for
homeowners.
Some have suggested that this is the year to avoid any tax
increase at all. But, it appears from the preliminary estimates,
that a level tax rate will result only in an unbalanced budget.
Thus, it appears that 2002 will be another year of facing a budget
crunch and addressing the various options.
Consider the following:
1. The newly appointed town administrator, on the job for less
than a month, will have just a few weeks to review this critical
problem and prepare the annual budget message for the town in
January.
2. And, the school department and other town departments are
already preparing their budget requests to submit to the town
finance committee for review.
3. To compound the problem, there are new faces sitting in very
important positions, without the past experience of dealing with
the numbers and the politics.
4. For example, the superintendent of schools is in the middle of
a one-year interim appointment – ending in June. The school
committee is hard at work searching for a new permanent
superintendent.
5. The town administrator began work in Walpole just three weeks
ago.
6. The chief of the fire department took over from former chief
Erickson just three weeks ago.
7. Our finance director, Dave Davison, is rumored to be leaving
his position soon. Davison has been the key person in developing
the full financial picture for the selectmen and the Town
Administrator for many years.
What to make of all this?
With the current cloudy financial picture at the state level, and
with labor contracts in the negotiation cycle in the town, and
with rising costs everywhere, it would seem that 2002 will be
another year to wrestle with the budget at town meeting and at the
ballot box.
Stay tuned.
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