OXFORD – Just more than 100 voters resoundingly approved a slightly lower 2005-2006 budget at the annual town meeting Saturday in the cafetorium of the Oxford Elementary School.
The total package this year is $2,958,740, $167,168 less than last year.
Selectmen and budget committee members agreed on specific appropriations for all 23 budgetary articles, and their recommendations were noted on the ballot.
Town Manager Michael Chammings said after the meeting that this year’s budget was the product of careful consideration by town officials. In the end, Chammings said, “Both the Board of Selectmen and the budget committee were on the same page with all the warrant articles, and it passed.” He added that it was a “good budget.”
Residents also elected four town officials Saturday. Caldwell Jackson defeated incumbent Lois Pike for a three-year selectman’s position. Incumbents Jerry Wax and John Palmer were elected for two school board positions; Wax’s term is for three years, Palmer’s for one. Bill Frye was elected to a three-year term as trustee of the Water District.
In other warrant business, the issue of raising the town’s water level strategy for Welchville Dam, Article 7, generated a good deal of discussion, but was not resolved.
Town Attorney Geoff Hole told residents he wanted at least two more weeks to study the deeds to the 150-year-old dam and surrounding land to determine where the water level should legally be.
Hole said that the opposing factions on the Welchville Dam issue could come to some sort of agreement, either on their own or through “mediation or arbitration,” but that, in his opinion, that did not seem likely.
Resident Henry Jackson wondered why changing the water level of Welchville Dam was being voted on at the town meeting in the first place.
“I thought the Board of Selectmen has intelligence enough to regulate the dam without us telling them how to do it,” Jackson said. “Is there a problem with the board setting the standard,” he added.
Resident Charles Howe agreed, saying, “The people we elected should have handled this.”
“The reason we brought this article up,” Selectmen Chair Floyd Thayer responded, “was to see if we were running the dam illegally.” Thayer added that the board followed the water strategy ordinance adopted in 1996 and amended in 2001 but was threatened with a lawsuit by a resident who wanted the level lowered.
Attorney Hole said a lawsuit is probably inevitable.
“I can’t picture every property owner around (Whitney and Hogan ponds) signing off” on an agreement. “My sense is that this has got to be resolved in court,” he added.
In the end, a resident’s motion to pass over article 7 was approved. Asked when discussion of the Welchville dam issue would be resumed, Thayer said after the town meeting he wasn’t sure, but acknowledged, “I think we’ll have to have a couple meetings on it before it’s finished.”
After article 7 was passed over, nearly 40 residents rose to leave the cafetorium, causing Resident Jerry Major to shouted sarcastically after them, “I’m glad all you people who voted on that are interested in the rest of the town’s business.”
Article 8, which asked residents whether they wanted to switch to a secret-ballot method for electing their town officials, was rejected despite newly ousted selectmen Lois Pike’s complaint that the current form of electing officials disenfranchised certain residents.
Residents with medical problems, as well as the old and disabled, often can’t make it to the town meeting to vote for officials, Pike said. Changing to a secret-ballot method would enfranchise those residents by allowing them to cast absentee ballots, she said. The current situation is “taxation without representation, and that is what we went to war over.”
The elementary school is handicap-accessible, Resident Henry Jackson countered, then asked why the tradition of town meeting should be changed.
“What is wrong with voting in officers the same day we vote for the budget?” Jackson asked.
Voters rejected article 8, 53-51.
Article 15, asking residents whether they were interested in having town officials investigate alternative rescue services for fiscal year 2007, was rejected, thereby ending debate for at least another issue on the issue of switching from Oxford Rescue to another ambulance service.
Residents also rejected article 28, which would have given a 2 percent discount to residents who pay their property taxes before the October and April due dates.
What is the point of the discount, several residents questioned, if it would have to be paid back in taxes anyway to article 29’s proposed $90,500 2% discount fund
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