These are book clubs, a morning club and an evening version. There are art shows and speakers. Ruth Hathaway has done a magnificent job making so much available. She was wonderful librarians, but the library needs to be open.
The Council on Aging is the second gem being eliminated. It just cannot happen. Please take time to visit and see what the Council on Aging is all about. It is located at 9 Jewel Rd. in a house donated by the Holbrook Cooperative Bank.
Connie Orlando is probably for so many seniors their best friend. Come see her and you will know why. Seniors who have no transportation to go shopping are taken to a doctor’s appointment for which they pay a fee.
The Council on Aging is incredible. There are many volunteers, kind and caring people. There are so many to welcome you. People play chess, cribbage, cards. There is a tea every Thursday afternoon. There is Marie Hatch’s “Knitten Kittens.” There is one special ingredient – sociability. It is a beautiful thing to see and to experience. You are always welcome.
The seniors in town were young once. They did yeoman’s work just as young people are doing today. They raised families and took part in everything. Would you believe that they will be at the dedication of the Sean Joyce Memorial Field? They care. They are no different from you except they are older and now they haven’t your strength and your ability to get things done. Please look into your hearts. Accept cuts to these two gems as long as cuts are made across the board.
Thank you for reading this letter. It is written from my heart.
Claire Buckley
P.S. I always have a P.S. in my letters. I want to recognize the hard work of the finance committee. Help them to see that everyone should hurt a little and not just our gems hurting a lot.
Legislators will try to ‘earmark’ funding
To the Editor:
As noted in an earlier communication from several months ago, I have written to Gov. Patrick, Sen. Morrissey, Rep. Driscoll, and Rep. Mariano. I have described the situation in Holbrook and requested legislation to assist the town with funding. I spoke to Sen. Morrissey today. It is too late for any legislation to go through. They will try to “earmark” funding to bring us up to level services.
However, with the override not passing, the case for Holbrook becomes less strong. Their line of thinking is that if the town doesn’t help itself, then it is more difficult to obtain funding. He said that Randolph was in a better position for additional funding since its override passed. It was noted that its high school accreditation was still in jeopardy but basically has a better chance than Holbrook.
His office will do what they can and if there is any movement, I will let you know. I will keep you informed if I get any additional communications. I have phone calls in to all offices as well.
Susan Martin
Superintendent of Schools
They scare me
To the Editor:
I went to the town hall on May 6 because I heard that the selectmen were going to review the lease for the transfer station.
I told them that I was disappointed that they couldn’t wait to do business with Mr. Walsh until they found out if he was absolved of the litigation brought against him. Mr. Stigas said that they were not doing business. I think that reviewing a lease is doing business.
I went on to say to Mr. Moore that I was concerned that Mr. Callinan, a member of the health board, wanted to hook up the Cochato River that runs beside two polluted properties to our water system. Mr. Moore said that had nothing to do with the transfer station.
I believe that it does matter because the health department has the responsibility to decide what kind of material comes into the transfer station, including gypsum.
Gypsum contains fluoride that can kill animals and vegetation and is harmful to humans. Fluoride is linked to learning disabilities and attention deficit and behavior disorders. Mr. Walsh used to work for a gypsum recycling station. He knows how lucrative handling gypsum is.
The state is looking for transfer stations that will recycle gypsum. Why do you suppose Mr. Walsh is in such a hurry to get this station built? What better place to bring in gypsum than our nice little town, whose selectmen don’t care what comes in as long as it has a dollar sign attached to it.
Tenants shall not cause any hazardous materials or toxic wastes, hazardous or toxic materials, collectively “hazardous materials” to be used, generated, stored, or disposed of on, under or about or transported to or from the premises, collectively, “hazardous materials activities”, without the board of health’s written consent which may be withheld for any reason or revoked at any time.
If the board of health consents to any such hazardous materials activity, tenant shall conduct them in compliance with all applicable regulations, as hereinafter defined, using all necessary and appropriate precautions and shall not cause or permit any release or threat of release of hazardous materials. This article gives the board of health the right to accept toxic materials, including gypsum.
I spoke with Mr. McGaughey some ime ago about the rats this facility will attract, and all he said was that the bowling alley had rats and that it used more water than the transfer station will use.
These are the people who are taking care of our little town. They scare me.
Yvonne Wright
Regarding the first letter about cutting the COA and the Library 9 hours ago
I would like to point out that the current proposed budget includes cuts to every town hall department. Under that budget there will be layoffs in the Accounting, Treasurers and Town Clerk departments and reduced hours in the Assessors, Board of Health, Conservation and Building departments. The Fire and Police departments are not getting any increase. The school department is getting an increase, but it will not be enough to stave off more cuts in the form of layoffs and/or busing. Those cuts to the school department would come on top of the 12 teacher layoffs and approximately ten other personnel cuts last year. The pain IS being spread out. Quite simply, there is not enough money to provide all services that a town shou
ld offer and therefore only services deemed essential are being preserved. The override attempt in the spring was not frivolous. It was meant to preserve all of the services in town and to restore the level of service to the school. Since it didn't pass, we all lose services.
Not sure why, but none is coming up. Is this due to the corss posting?
At least, I see it. Don’t know why you don’t.
A community receives a per capitat amount based on the number of seniors who register. Presumably, the town owns the building, and it’s a perfect place for seniors to work off their circuit breaker credits for abatemetns on property tax. why not just keep the paid director, and use volunteers for other services?
It’s enough to make me think of filing for the over 65 tax abatement I’ve been “entitled” to for the last couple of years.
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p>I could work it off at my local senior center,instead of contributing to the schools, police department, fire department, recyling program, summer jobs programs and on and on.
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p>Love it.
NATURALLY, they should all be paying more. WHAT was I thinking?
The Holbrook experience is becoming the common experience accross the Commonwealth. The real problem is that we now fund more services (mandated by the state through our schools) and the property tax is insufficient and regressive putting a limit on what many of our folks can afford. The solution is to increase the income tax 0.5% and hardwire the increased revenue to the local cities and towns on a per child basis. This would raise $1B in revenue, or about $1000 per child. It would allow local communities to restore the balance of local vs state aid and stop passing overrides that tax our seniors out of their homes and cause the cuts in services we all desire.
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p>Please see my post at: http://vps28478.inmotionhosting.com/~bluema24/u…
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p>Please write to the Governor and your legislator and tell them to support “0.5% for the Kids” .
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p>We are now 47th in the country in the portion of our local schools funded by the state and we need to fix it.
Bruce Leicher
I’m troubled by any proposal that earmarks a broad based revenue stream for only one public structure. I don’t think it’s a community building strategy.
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p>Successful override campaigners tell me that the key to winning is to bring all the residents currently involved in various civic projects together and talk about building a healthier community for everyone.
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p>They recruit parents supporting their children’s underfunded schools (not just extra curricular activities like music, drama and sports), senior citizens who contribute thousands of hours at the Council on Aging, (as Ms Porcupine recommends), men and women who spend endless weekends coaching pop warner, little league, and pee wee soccer(deserving of extra merits), environmentalists who organize local earth days and recycling projects, attend zoning boards to protecting precious wetlands from local development, sponsor clean up days at local water ways, and especially the local businesses men and women who donate tens of thousands of dollars of products to seniors, homeless families and buy ads in hundreds of ad-books for local community projects.
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p>The 2 ½ over ride campaigns have served as laboratories and a model for how a cross sector of local residents can work together to figure out how to convince their own friends and neighbors about what kind of town they want, and how they will pay for it, together.
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p>It’s one way for everyone to poke their heads out of their own current civic “silo” and talk to the folks from the other silos in town about how to build a healthier community.
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p>That’s kind of strategy we need to build pubic support statewide for a broadbased tax increase, I think.
Judy,
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p>You raise a fair point. Having had successful overrides in Harvard for years — we had our first failure this year — we have always build it as an all for one scenario. Unfortunately, it has become clear that we are now straining the system too much by failing to use enough state revenue to fund education. Because the state aid formula is inequitable and inadequate, a broad, raise all boats tax is in fact what is needed.
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p>While ideally it would be nice to just increase the taxes generally and trust the Legislature to distribute it fairly, history has for better or worse proven otherwise or at least proven that there is now a critical mass of folks seeking to reduce our state income tax. They want to do so because they feel they are getting taxed at both ends and they can’t control the effectiveness and the efficiency of the spending. By hardwiring the funds, enough folks can be persuaded to support a tax increase — probably not otherwise. My conversations – not necessary scientific – with many folks suggests that those who oppose overrides support the tax rollback but would consider supporting this proposal.
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p>By and large our cities and towns do a decent job running our schools, but if we continue down a course of reduced education funding that will not be possible, we will end up like California with a 2 class system — private and public schools. We have a chance to save our public schools and given its importance I think we need a dedicated tax.
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p>The effect of this proposal will be broader that just the schools. Because of the 70% ratio of spending at the local level on schools in many towns, it will allow local cities and towns to either reduce property taxes or restore lost services for all residents or a combination of both.
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p>Harvard is a bit like the canary in the coalmine. Because we receive a small share of state aid, we are forced to tax many of our seniors at 25% of their income to pay an average family tax bill. As a result we have a choice, taxing folks out of their homes or cutting teachers. As other communities catch up and build their structural deficits, they will get there soon. Even if you can pass overrides, at some point it becomes unsustainable. Eventually, as schools decline, those with higher incomes will send their kids to private school, seniors will move, causing taxes to rise more, and more folks send their kids to private school. Eventually, overrides will not pass anymore and we will have a 2 class system.
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p>0.5% for the Kids is really 0.5% for Everyone because it lets folks stay in their communities and makes local communities financially sustainable.
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p>Bruce Leicher