Conventional municipal budget & reporting practices make it difficult to answer simple questions like “How much of our annual budget is allocated to [insert department name or expense line here]?” In West Boylston, for example, health insurance costs and debt service fall into two general buckets and are not linked back to the originating departments.
◊ West Boylston ◊
Funding what we value: focus
I applaud our town leaders for initiating the SWOT analysis. In fact, an annual survey of resident values, needs and preferences should become standard governing practice. A successful survey would be: Thoughtful – concise & well-organized with questions that make sense. Comprehensive – one survey covering all departments rather than multiple surveys from individual departments.
Funding what we value: intro
At West Boylston’s April 15th Select Board meeting, the Town Administrator outlined the process and results for a recently conducted analysis to assess the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to our community. During a five hour session with 17 volunteer residents, the Beaman Library surfaced as one of the top 3 community strengths. Ironically, the
My town election/library/school dream
April 7th was election day in West Boylston. Only 11.6% of the town’s 4,758 registered voters cast ballots. My guess is that low awareness, low interest, too many uncontested offices and too many other things to do were behind the low turnout. I dream about doing better next year. And I’m still thinking about stone
Voluntary Limits, Part 2
Even at the end of my year-long volunteer tenure, there were many people I was unable to help from the front desk. Of those, roughly 50% asked straightforward questions and I simply did not have the specific knowledge to help them. Adult Patron1: Do you have the latest book by [insert popular author name here]?
Voluntary Limits, Part 1
In 2007, I volunteered at the Beaman Library every week. The permanent staff invested a lot of training in me that year and I was able to do a lot for them; I shelved books, weeded the collection, fulfilled ILL requests, recorded stats for the state government, processed new weekly material acquisitions, entered holdings into
Extreme thoughts on public libraries
The West Boylston Selectmen and Town Administrator have called for reduced FY2010 budgets from each department to meet a significant revenue shortfall in the coming fiscal year. Our Administrator has stated that in spite of deep across-the-board cuts, there is no money for our public library. That seems pretty extreme to me. Through working with
