Madison residents get details on budget
MADISON >> Residents filled the Polson Middle School auditorium Tuesday night to hear about the town and board of education budgets, as well as proposed changes to the town charter.
Residents had a chance to sound off on both the charter, as presented by the Charter Review Committee, and the budget, as presented by the Board of Finance.
Joan Walker, selectman and chairperson of the Charter Review Committee, said the Board of Selectmen will meet within 15 days to review the charter and make the appropriate changes.
board of selectmen have two special meetings set up to review all of the charters, they are going to do recommendations back to the Charter Review Committee, Walker said. will then take those recommendations under consideration, so we will have 30 days after that 15 days to be able to finalize the charter that will then be taken back to the board of selectmen for voting. 11px;
One of the big things Walker announced during the public hearing was the possibility of hiring a town manager, which she said had been requested by some in town.
hard to tell. It hard to predict what the board of selectmen will take because there have been lots of comments through the community and it not just this public hearing, Walker said. have been comments to the website, as well, so we have to see.
Walker said the first selectman is tasked with multiple duties at once. During the presentation she said hiring a town manager would help alleviate some of those roles the first selectman plays, which she said are chief elected official and chief operating officer.
The charter also suggests giving department heads the power to fire and hire staff, rather than having that duty placed solely on selectmen.
First Selectmen Fillmore McPherson said he also is uncertain as to which way the board will turn with hiring a town manager, but said it will be a part of a separate question when the public votes on the changes to the charter.
read is that there are mixed feelings in town and I don know how that will turn out. It will be a separate vote. So there will be at least two, and maybe three, questions on the charter, said McPherson.
McPherson said the board also will ask residents whether they want extended town meetings, which he said is not very common in the state.
extended town meeting is a significant change. It not been done before in the state of Connecticut and it one of those topics that sound nice, but cheap jerseys I personally am concerned if it doesn work out as well as hoped, then you stuck with it for ten years, said McPherson. maybe be some other ways to deal with that topic.
Davis said the public should be allowed to speak at least once more toward the end of the meeting before the board votes on anything, that way, the public has an opportunity to voice concerns should they ever change their stance on an issue after everything has been said and done, which the board agreed to.
The board of finance presented a $77,794,313 budget to the town, a 2.7 percent increase over the last budget. The town portion is $23,970,990, a 3.16 percent increase over last year, while the Board of Education portion was $58,823,323, a 2.49 percent increase.
McPherson said a good deal of the increase to the town budget can be attributed to capital projects, which contributed a 13.21 percent increase of the last fiscal year capital projects budget.
can speak to the Board of Ed, but on the town side, there is normal inflationary increase. People do get some raises every now and again. But we actually increasing our capital spending more than the operational spending, McPherson said. we putting more money into roads, putting more money into technology, we had several servers crash in our police department this year, so we doing some rebuilding in our technology area. We increasing our fire truck reserves because looking down the road, we will be buying a new hook and ladder truck in a few years and they don come cheap, so we have to put money away from that.
Resident Jeffrey Burt, who said he was a board member for Madison Youth Soccer, said support the budget that presented. One of the things that come to mind is this last year we had difficulties with our field, specifically at the surf club. It had gotten so bad we had to close them. But it not just soccer; my children play four different activities that essentially use all the fields in Madison. And if we don maintain our fields, it not only creates a safety issue but also creates a scheduling issue.
what was mentioned several times by the audience, we going to try to do a better job at maintaining our fields and our playgrounds, McPherson said.
The proposed charter http://www.cheapjerseys11.com/ questions will be prepared for the November ballot by the Board of Selectmen by Sept. 3, and the budget will go to referendum May 12.
