Editorial
DOR review

The voters of Ashburnham voted at their town meeting to have the town request state Department of Revenue staff members assigned to the Division of Local Services come in and do a financial management review.

This is good in theory, and let us hope is good in practicality.

Interim Town Administrator Paul Boushell has now sent the letter requesting the review to the DOR and Ashburnham is on the list of towns and cities the DOR will soon schedule to visit.

Ashburnham officials run a more than $13 million operation with tens of millions of capital assets. They work with a school district that operates a $26 million budget with more than $60 million in capital assets.

According to the DOR's Web site, the financial management review is completed upon request by the town/cities highest elected officials. "An initial meeting with local officials determines the scope of the review and the structure of the report. At the end of a three- or four-month process of on-site visits and interviews, the report is issued to the municipality, copied to the community's state senator and representative," according to the Web site.

The DOR staff is not going to come in and say you should spend x amount of money a year on pens, y number of dollars on oil and fuel, and z amount on computers.

They are going to come in and look at the procedures in place for money management, the staffing levels and procedures, as well as the future growth of the town, according to the DOR spokesperson Bob Bliss.

This will be a good thing if the town officials (elected and appointed, volunteer and paid) and residents take a serious look at the recommendation and don't just dismiss them because they will cost money or change the status quo.

The biggest problem is going to come when the DOR staff makes recommendations and the town officials spend months arguing about them. That is not to say everything should be accepted just because it was recommended.

Yes, the suggestions should be reviewed, discussed, prioritized, but there will be no point to that unless some (or many) are implemented.