We received the following anonymous article.
I Understand Selectman Stewart did an excellent job presenting the budget to the budget committee on Thursday night. It is great to see a selectman care enough to take the time to work well with the budget committee. She should be commended for doing such an excellent job as a selectman. I hope this gets out to many people, so the townspeople will be aware of this when it comes to the next election. This shows Ms. Stewart really cares about the town of Ashland.
I have heard the same response from people who were at the meeting. Preparation of the town budget is perhaps the most most important task of the Selectmen. To be fair, however, the town administrator, Paul Branscombe, and the department heads are the one who do most of the work. The Selectmen oversee the process. This years Paul has worked with the Department Heads to estimate long term-capital expenses. As Tony Randall said at a recent Select Board Meeting, planning for long-term expenses will help stabilize our tax rate. Planning for long-term capital expenses and establishing capital reserve accounts to deal with them is something that the town should have been doing all along. Our current financial situation is, in part, due to a lack of long term planning. I don't believe that any of the selectmen have instituted long-term planning or establishes capital reserve funds during their tenures. To my knowledge, only the School Board has had effective long term planning. The movement toward long term planning has come from the Budget Committee, specifically Steve Felton, and Paul Branscombe. The Coalition for Action has also supported this effort.
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