Our next annual town meeting is Monday May 4 at 7 pm. I am hoping that a
lot of residents attend because in addition to voting on the yearly
government budget and motions to authorize revolving accounts and
enterprise fund expenditures we are going to consider a borrowing
authorization to fund the proposed fiber to the home project. There is a
citizen effort to roll back property taxes and the proponents say that
it is very simple. They say that taxes are too high and we need to cut
budgets in half. I know this would be devastating to our community.
These are questions that are critical to our future.

We pay local taxes to support local services. This taxing pays for:
public works such as highway road building and maintenance, street
lights, our cemetery, and road sanding and snow plowing; our public
schools including educating children with special needs; public safety
including police, building inspection services, an ambulance
contribution to Orange, animal control, tree warden and tree removal
and our fire department. We provide for human services such as veteran's
benefits, council on aging, and a health department. We fund cultural
and recreational work with funding for our public library, the
recreation committee, celebrations, and maintenance of the town
fountain, Town Park, and Fellows Field. Sometimes it is more efficient
to work in concert with other towns and we do a lot of this though the
Franklin Regional Council of Governments. Nothing worth much comes for
free. You get what you pay for or less. As a resident of more than
thirty years I have gained experience as a business owner, in government
and in non for profit management. I want to tell you that we have a very
impressive team which helps make Warwick special. Think really hard
about it before you dismantle it.

Did you know that over half of all our spending is for schools? It is
part of what we do and it is very important. We do it pretty well and
the cost is rising. The half of school spending that state funding and
other revenue provide is not growing. What schools spending costs us in
local taxes are only slightly more than half of what the education
actually costs. Our per-pupil expenditure is $15,000 to educate each
child per year. I recently was elected to the Pioneer school committee
and I've been asking difficult questions and pushing for the school
committee to develop a long range or strategic plan so the organization
can change and survive in the future and be more affordable. Does it
make sense to operate a local school with fewer than 40 students from
Warwick and 20 in Leyden? If you are interested in looking into these
questions contact me.

The revenue picture for the town isn't bright. The state budget is a
billion dollars underwater. I am not holding my breath for them to save
us. It is on us. One place we are seeing increased revenues is highway
grant funding. The governor just announced another round of pothole
grants and increased the Chapter 90 highway grant by 50%. By June after
buy a new pay loader with highway grant funds we will have over $500,000
in available highway grant funding. I am working with the Selectboard
and department on allocating more of our highway grant money, wherever
possible, to the regular operation of our department to reduce the tax
burden.

Both the Fiber to the Home (FTTH) proposal and the citizen cut budgets
in half proposals are critical to our future. If not already, become
informed and involved.

The next in the Warwick Broadband sponsored Second Tuesday Workshops is
April 14 at 7 p.m. The subject is "The Cloud". Susan Wright will present
on the Google offering and I will present on the Microsoft cloud. This
is an informal gathering. Come to learn, listen, and contribute at
whatever your comfort level. Our March meeting on websites had about a
dozen participants. At the next gathering we will discuss hosted
applications, storage and more. At a future gathering we will take a
look at "Smartphones" both Android and Windows phones. All these
workshops take place at the town hall beginning at 7 pm and are offered
at no cost to you, our residents, taxpayers and customers.

By now you've gotten the letter from our Broadband Committee inviting
you to participate in the next step in making fiber optic service a
possibility by sending your $49 earnest money to WiredWest. I sent in
mine and hope you join me. The next Fiber project informational meeting
is March 31 at 6 pm.

J. David Young Administrative Coordinator 978-729-3224