2016-02-08-AC-STM1-STM2-rpt - Laserfiche WebLink

Browse Search

AC–STM2016-1&2016-2 PPROPRIATIONOMMITTEE Introduction The Appropriation Committee is appointed by the Town Moderator and serves as an advisory group to the elected members of Town Meeting. The Committee is required by Town by-law to present its recom- mendations to Town Meeting prior to any vote with a financial impact on the Town. This report summa- rizes the Committee’s deliberations and analyses regarding the Warrant Articles deemed to have financial significance, along with the vote of the Committee for each Article. The Committee also gives oral re- ports and responds to questions during Town Meeting as necessary, or when important information has become available following the publication of a report. This report is distributed to the members of Town Meeting as a printed document and as an electronic document via the Town website. It is normally published a week prior to the session when the Articles are anticipated to be taken up in Town Meeting. Due to the scheduling of these Special Town Meetings, this report is being released three days prior to the start of debate. Special Town Meeting Numbers Given the number of Special Town Meetings being called in recent years, and the need to clearly and suc- cinctly refer to actions from prior town meetings, the Town has adopted a naming scheme that will be used by the Town and the finance committees. Special Town Meetings will be identified by the calendar year in which they were called, plus a sequence number spanning the entire year (rather than a sequence number in just the month, as before). Thus, the two meetings addressed in this report are “2016-1” and “2016-2”. The next STM, concurrent with the 2016 Annual Town Meeting, will be “2016-3”. An article can be identified by appending its number to the meeting identifier, so “2016-1.2” refers to the Article 2 of the first STM in 2016. While this is sufficient to uniquely identify any article, we will typical- ly include more descriptive context when discussing articles, since we don’t expect our readers to memo- rize the article numbers. Acknowledgements The content of this report, except where otherwise noted, was researched, written and edited by members of the Committee with support from Town staff. Our Committee has the pleasure and the privilege of working with Town Manager, Carl Valente; Assistant Town Manager for Finance, Rob Addelson; our Budget Officer, Patricia Moore; the Capital Expenditures Committee; the Community Preservation Committee; the School Committee; the Permanent Building Committee; Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Mary Czajkowski; Interim Director of Finance and Operations, Ian Dailey; and the Board of Select- men. We thank the municipal and school staff, Town officials, boards and volunteers who have contribut- ed time and expertise to help us prepare this report. Last but not least, we thank Sara Arnold, who records and prepares the minutes for our meetings. 1