Letter: Wood endorses override, Roy, Often and Spinney

Hello Grafton,

I write to you today to urge you all to vote Yes! for the override on June 23rd.  I feel very strongly that we must properly fund our school personnel and support the important needs of our first responders.

Like many of you I too wish the current Select Board, and board members past, had handled things better heading into this current fiscal crisis. I too am concerned for my family and my job during these economic times. I however cannot bring myself to punish my children, or your children, or our future generation, out of my own fear. We must maintain adequate schooling and we must maintain adequate public safety, there is no acceptable alternative choice to me.

On the topic of the Select Board, I do wish that prior members had cared enough about informing our town of operating in a structural deficit, rather than any attitudes of “we’ll figure it out” and “we don’t want to scare the voters.”  Well I AM scared, and I should be, lack of planning has gotten us this far, but with proper planning we may not need this again, or at least we’d be better prepared for it with good fiscal policies in place.

That is why I am choosing to vote for Mat Often and Colleen Roy for Select Board. Both are currently serving on the Financial Committee. Mat has long served our town and has a well thought out and well reasoned approach to difficult topics, he is approaching the election on a desire of unity and fiscally responsible forward planning.

As for Colleen, she has attended almost every Select Board meeting over the past year+ (unless she had a conflicting meeting with finance committee) and every topic she brings to the table, she researches and gains a great understanding of not only the discussion today, but the discussion of years past, in order to have a properly informed opinion and discussion moving forward.  She has repeatedly had good ideas and made good suggestions, she will make a great asset to the board and the Town as a whole.

This leads me to my next point, Finance Committee needs to have people who support the idea of cooperation with the town and its boards and needs to have the desire to dig into the budget as it is presented, and not just “defer to the TA.”   Our FinComm is appointed by the Town Moderator, which makes the Moderator an especially important race to me.

I strongly support Bruce Spinney for Moderator, and urge anyone who will listen to vote for him. His years of experience and dedication to this town, his breadth of board experience, and his ability to direct and oversee difficult and complex conversations in a professional manner is what causes me to think he will be the perfect voice for our Moderator, and have the experience necessary to appoint people for FinComm (and other boards) who will help those boards fulfill their missions effectively.

Thank You,

Justin Wood
Planning Board Clerk (up for a non-contested 1 year election)