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FY 2011 Budget Includes a Property Tax Increase Soccer fields ready to go
by Heather Kelley October 28, 2009 — The Board of Selectmen has approved a budget message for fiscal year 2011. Picking up the recommendations of Town Manager Norman Khumalo, this message includes reducing FY 2010’s budget by 2.65% to arrive at budget levels for 2011. The message also encourages the finding of further efficiencies, additional revenues, and more cost-savings. A third point asks all departments to “maintain the town’s current level of services.” “It’s a new day, a new dawn, and we have to think differently,” agreed RJ Dourney.
However, both Chairman Brian Herr, as well as School Committee Chair Nancy Burdick, who was in attendance to hear the budget message, questioned how it would be possible to maintain level services while enduring a budget cut. After a discussion of the point, the Board concurred that keeping this part of the message intact would encourage creativity on the part of department heads.
The preliminary projected FY 2011 budget includes a property tax increase. When Michelle Gates queried whether the Board could consider looking at a budget that did not include the increase, Herr replied “we’re going to need that money.” He further elaborated that not to take the 2.5% increase now would make next year “that much worse.” READ MORE... Senator Karen Spilka and Representative Carolyn Dykema, the state legislators for Hopkinton, spent about an hour presenting information and answering questions from the state level. Dykema opened their remarks, noting that “The state is in the same situation that the towns are in, which is budget challenge.”
Spilka said that the encouragement of job creation, combined with streamlining, was the way to go “to really try and get us out of this recession.” Dykema agreed, noting that small businesses were most likely to help bring the state into economic recovery, and that more had to be done to help them obtain credit, which would then enable that recovery.
Dourney raised the question of what their thoughts were on a potential casino being built in Milford. As the Chair of Economic Development, Spilka said she would be presiding over a hearing taking place on Thursday on the topic of gambling and casinos in the Commonwealth. As such, Spilka said that it was her job to keep an open mind. However, she did stress that if a casino ever were to be built, it would have to be accepted by the greater community around it – and not just by the host town in which it would be built.
“I’m a casino skeptic,” declared Dykema. In her reasoning, she argued that casinos are self-contained entities, not true forces of economic development. “It will be very difficult to convince me that a casino anywhere in the neighborhood of here would be a good idea.”
Brian O'Keefe of Hopkinton Youth Soccer, and Ken Driscoll of Parks and Recreation, came before the Board with news that lease agreements for the planned Fruit Street Fields were awaiting final review by lawyers. Announcing that they were at 99.9% completion, Driscoll said that “Our goal is to have the turf fields up and running by next fall,” with the grass fields needing until the spring before they would be playable.
The Town will be engaging the services of the Conway School of Landscape Design to produce a master plan for the downtown area. Parks and Recreation put up $3000 (money raised through their program fees, and not from the town budget, Herr pointed out), while an additional $3200 was raised through private fundraising, in order to pay the graduate students, who will be working under the supervision of their professors.
Rownak Hussain, library Director, accompanied by Denise Kofron and Susan Marshall, brought brochures about the Hopkinton Reading Marathon to the Board, encouraging them to sign up to “read a marathon.” More information on the program can be found at the library’s website. |
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