Ashburnham voters to see a number of capital related articles
By Caitlyn Kelleher JOURNAL REPORTER

Ashburnham voters will face a number of building and infrastructure related warrant articles at the town meeting including requests related to renovating the elementary school, the VMS building and repairing the roads.

Voters will get the chance to send two of the requests to the ballot for a capital exclusion, which would be held at a later date. One of the requests is for $400,000 for the feasibility study for Briggs (at least 53.53 percent will be reimbursed by the Massachusetts School Building Authority).

The second request is to fund a 10-year road project that would repair most of the public roads in town or sets them on the schedule to be repaired from another account. The project would cost $7 million, which would be borrowed above and beyond the town's Proposition 2 ½ limit and would be eliminated from the tax levy once the project is paid off. The tax impact is 17 cents per $1,000 of home values.

The Annual Town Meeting will start at 10 a.m. in the auditorium of Oakmont Regional High School on Saturday.

As a contingency item the Selectmen decided to put on a $170,000 request for one year funding of a road maintenance program. DPW Director Don Ouellette said the $170,000 would cover about one road.

The Ashburnham-Westminster Regional School Committee and the Briggs Building Committee has worked to do community outreach over the past year, but the request for funding is the first step to completing the feasibility study that is outlined by the new MSBA regulations.

The Selectmen and Advisory Board members both support this request.

The Selectmen voted to make specific recommendations to the voters at their past few meetings but with Margaret Whitney's election to the Board of Selectmen on Tuesday some of those recommendations may change.

One of the recommendations includes the vote against the requested $80,000 to fund the creation of construction documents for the VMS Building, which would prepare the town to seek an $1 million grant to build a new senior center in that building. (See a story on page 6.)

After her election Whitney said she was pleased with the plans and the feasibility study that has recently been completed.

Voters will also get to review the town's operating budget of approximately $13.4 million, which sees an approximate 3 percent decrease in departmental services and only $276,553 increase over last year's budget.

Town officials are concerned about they funding they have given different departments and plan to address this is in the fall by appropriating a special article to cover gas and heating costs.

The Advisory Board is requesting two financial planning articles, which they put on the ballot through citizens' petitions.

The first article voters will see is an article asking to have the town officials invite the state Department of Revenue's Division of Local Service to come in and do a Financial Management Review.

DOR spokesperson Bob Bliss said these reviews are very common and the DOR staff does the reviews annually throughout the state. He said it is a "friendly process" that will make recommendations but does not mandate the town to take any specific actions.

The second article they placed on the ballot is a request to create a Capital Planning Committee.