Letter: Wood asks Select Board to support override

Hello Select Board,

I am writing you in my capacity as a citizen and not on behalf of any board.

I wanted to express my strong support in our school system maintaining level service.

As such I wish the Select Board to vote, early, to place an override on the electoral Ballot, either for March for the national primaries or for May for our local elections. I feel this vote should be additionally accompanied by a vote for the Select Board itself to declare support for the override itself, So we can get clear demonstration of your supporting our school systems needs.

I am well aware that you will have multiple forthcoming meetings with the School Committee to explore various ways we can potentially save money, and other aspects of the School Committees budget. I urge the votes above to take place ahead of the completion of the School Committee meetings. Any sudden solution for the budget that can be thought up during these meetings should, frankly, have been observed within the past years since the last override. And any new solutions only serve to help delay any potential need for a new override in the future.

I also urge you to include Finance Committee in an upcoming (early) future meeting, or multiple future meetings. Tackling the budget as a town and including the committee tasked with advising us on the multiple aspects of our budget should not be overlooked.

Finally I urge you to ask our Town Administrators office to draft an idea of what our budget would look like if we fully funded level services for the School Department for FY21, what town services would we have to lose, cut, in order to make that happen. This is especially important to me since getting as close to Level Service is immensely important and knowing what trade offs exist on the general budget side would help you and others know what we may lose if we both fully fund the School budget and do not manage to pass the override as a voter base.

I hope to be present this Tuesday, and if so I will happily address the contents of this e-mail in person. Please do include this in the minutes and/or the Select Board Packet for this (Jan 7) meeting.

Thank You, Speaking for myself,
~Justin Wood
Grafton Planning Board, Clerk
Grafton CPC