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Override to
benefit more than schools
By Jay Turner
Citizen Staff
Residents
can expect to see visible improvements in municipal services in
fiscal year 2009, now that a $4.5 million operational override
has been passed.
Although the
bulk of the override dollars slated for next year will be used
to supplement the school budget, a total of $272,000 will be
distributed among seven town departments, including fire,
police, library, public works, recreation, council on aging and
veterans services.
The
Citizen recently contacted the heads of three of those
departments, and all three — the fire chief, police chief and
library director — confirmed that what was lost as a result of
budget cuts in FY08 will soon be restored.
The Fire
Department will receive the biggest financial boost from the
override, gaining $142,000 over a base budget of $4,014,089.
Most of the money, according to Fire Chief Thomas Ronayne, will
be used to increase the number of firefighters per shift in an
effort to guarantee the availability of a second ambulance.
Last year, a
5 percent budget cut forced Ronayne to reduce manning to nine
per shift, leaving the town with one operating ambulance from
July to January. The chief then implemented a partial
restoration beginning on January 22, operating a second
ambulance Monday to Saturday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., after
firefighters who had been out on leave had returned.
“We should
be able to start right off at July 1 with 11 per shift, 24 hours
a day,” Ronayne said, “and a second ambulance should be in
service every single day and every single night for the entire
year.”
In addition
to the manning increases, the override supplement will also help
pay for the firefighters’ new, one-year contract, which includes
a 2 percent raise — their first since fiscal year 2007.
Over at the
Police Department, Chief Ken Berkowitz said the $51,000 he will
gain from the override will be enough to restore one major line
item: the crossing guards.
Berkowitz
had eliminated the salaries of all 16 guards from this year’s
budget, although eight were eventually restored when the School
Committee and the Board of Selectmen agreed to split the cost
for one year.
Berkowitz
said next year he will continue to operate with eight crossing
guards, mainly because it “worked out well” this year. “It’s
fluid, too,” he said, “because every year the [number of] kids
change.”
The
third-largest override beneficiary on the municipal side will be
the library, which will have $30,000 to add to its FY09 budget
of $892,578.
Director
Mark Lague said he will now have enough staff to keep the
library open on Mondays, which has not been the case this school
year, and open on Fridays during the summer. Last summer, the
library was open just four days a week, Monday to Thursday.
“Restoring
our hours was our first priority because, otherwise, we would
not be serving the community in the way that we should,” Lague
said.
He also said
there will be enough funding to meet minimum standards set by
the state, although he did say they would have to “dig a little
deeper” into their own pockets, using money from revolving
accounts and trust funds, in order to do so.
Without an
override, however, Lague said it would have been impossible for
the library to meet minimum standards, which would have resulted
in a significant loss of state aid.
Of the
remaining $49,000 in the municipal override supplement, $28,000
will go to the DPW; $11,000 will go to the Recreation
Department; $6,000 will go to the Council on Aging and $4,000
will go to the Veterans Department.
June 12, 2008
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