Truck purchase tops Shutesbury Town Meeting agenda

Published on GazetteNET (http://www.gazettenet.com)

Truck purchase tops Shutesbury Town Meeting agenda
By Ben Storrow
Created 05/04/2011 - 4:00am


SHUTESBURY - The purchase of a new pickup for the highway department, the creation of a high-speed Internet network and a $5.6 million budget figure head up the agenda for voters who will convene at the Shutesbury Elementary School Saturday for the annual Town Meeting.

Also among the 22 items on the warrant is a proposal to create a capital stabilization account, a plan to use $15,000 in Community Preservation Funds to repair the sills of the old West Schoolhouse and a pair of resolutions - one aimed at voicing town support for an end to violent conflict, the other at changing the manner in which charter schools are funded.

The meeting will be start at 9 a.m.

Town meeting will not address any articles relating to on-going cleanup efforts of a decades-old gasoline spill beneath the fire station, as town officials are waiting for the level of the water table to drop before a clean method that essentially sucks the remaining vapors out of the soil can be tested, said Shutesbury Town Administrator, Becky Torres. However, town officials will give a presentation updating residents on work being done, Torres said.

The purchase of a new pickup truck, which at $60,000 figures to be the most expensive item on this year's agenda, has been proposed each of the previous two years, but has not been approved by voters, Torres said. Town officials felt that the vehicle's mechanical difficulties, on the one hand, and town finances, on the other, made it necessary and feasible to purchase a new truck this year, she said. The truck is used primarily to plow the town's smaller roads and for other maintenance projects throughout the year, she said.

The town will also seek to establish a capital stabilization account, one which would be used to help the town make larger capital purchases throughout the years, Torres said. This year, voters will be asked to transfer $100,000 from the general stabilization account into the new capital fund.

Patrick J. Callahan, finance committee chairman, termed the proposed town budget for the fiscal year that begins on July 1 as "austere," saying that all budget increases were minimal. The proposed budget would increase $88,512 over last year's ledger.

"Once again we are being very, very conservative spending money," Callahan said.

Voters will also take the second of two votes on a proposal sponsored by the municipal consortium WiredWest to create what is essentially a municipal broadband network. An affirmative vote would allow Shutesbury to join WiredWest in its efforts to bring high-speed Internet from rural town centers to residents' homes. The proposition received the first of the two necessary approvals from residents at a special town meeting last October.
Daily Hampshire Gazette © 2011 All rights reserved