We appear to a few unanswered questions to address heading into Cinco de Mayo weekend 2017.
Sunderland residents go to the polls tomorrow to make what is often the toughest choice for any community.
On the Sunderland ballot is a Proposition 2½ override, a vote which comes less than a week after Sunderland Annual Town Meeting voters passed a $7-million-plus fiscal 2018 operating budget contingent on passage of said override, which would add 80 cents to the town’s current tax rate.
Unlike a debt exclusion, which lasts only a finite amount of time and is used to pay for a specific project, overrides don’t go away. They are the fiscal equivalent of the herpes virus — you keep them forever, and they end up inflicting pain long after the initial diagnosis.
I know this case is especially tough for Sunderland officials, who have taken great pains to avoid this scenario, which was, in some ways, inevitable, given the defensive conditions under which towns are forced to handle their finances.
Every year, it seems, towns are being forced to do more with less in the face of increasing unfunded mandates from Boston. And, most years, they are able to pull it off. But every fifth or sixth budget cycle, it catches up, forcing many towns to make the kind of Draconian decisions akin to what Sunderland faces tomorrow.
However it turns out, the town will survive. But it will by no means be easy politically, which is really the only constant of budgeting life in “the 413.”
I wonder how many Franklin County police and fire chiefs knew about Greenfield’s plan to host a regional dispatch center before it hit The Recorder’s front page last week?
If it did, it probably shouldn’t have, because this thing has been cooking for quite a while. I first got wind of it this past fall during a WHMP Breakfast Club side conversation with Greenfield Mayor Bill Martin, which gave an interesting glimpse into his “vision” for the future of downtown Greenfield, specifically the west end of Main Street.
“The three fastest growing segments of the economy are medical, government and nonprofit service agencies,” Martin said. “That’s where I think the future (of Main Street) is heading.”
In that context, putting a new Greenfield public safety and regional dispatch center at the former Carr Hardware property makes perfect sense both logistically and financially for Greenfield, especially if it can find a way to talk the state into paying for all or at least part of it.
The really big question — one to which I’m sure many of the county’s chiefs would be interested in hearing an answer — is whether the State Police are interested in getting out of the dispatch business. Currently, the county is covered by Shelburne Control, which is run through the state police essentially as a free service.
At the time of our conversation, Martin was absolutely sure that the staties were done with dispatch, but I’ve yet to hear anyone at the command level say that.
And, assuming it’s true, will the new service being proposed continue to be offered free to towns? Or will there be an up-charge, which isn’t likely to sit well with many smaller towns struggling to pay their bills as it is?
Despite all that, the upsides for Greenfield could be potentially huge, especially considering all the big-ticket items it currently has in the fiscal fire.
It looks like the town of Montague “dodged” a political bullet regarding the recent investigation into alleged police department handling of the town’s prescription drug collection box.
The Massachusetts Attorney General’s office has announced that it has closed its 11-month investigation into the handling of the drug box, without filing charges, which essentially means the case is closed.
This is obviously good news for Montague Police Chief Chip Dodge, who had been temporarily been suspended at the beginning of the probe, only to be reinstated once Montague Selectmen received more details about the case.
Since then, the board has stood squarely behind Dodge, a leap of faith which seems to have been the right call given the absence of any charges or further sanctions. Now the board needs to focus on getting the drug box back and the town reinstated in the DA’s Anti-Crime Task Force, two things which will be largely dependent on what’s in the AG’s final report.
“We are going to look at the information and see where it goes from here,” Northwestern District Attorney Dave Sullivan said. “Clearly, these programs are seen as a benefit to the community.”
Whether they come back will largely depend on what Sullivan sees in that file, leaving the rest of us to ponder what really happened in this case, which still seems to be very much open in the court of public opinion.
Chris Collins is the Franklin County News Bureau Chief for WHAI, WPVQ and WHMP Radio. He is a former staff reporter for The Recorder, and is a Greenfield native.