Now that the members of the Mattapoisett Capital Planning Committee have met with each of the town’s department heads, they are nearly ready to vote. Chuck McCullough stated that with the completion of the ‘wish list’ meetings, where department heads revisited 2014 capital spending and lobbied for their must have items for 2015 and beyond, prioritization of those requests can now take place.
McCullough said, “I’ll visit once again with each department head to make sure I understood their request, then I can tune-up my report.” He plans to complete those meeting in the coming week. Once that is done, he will call another meeting with the committee members sometime during the week of April 7. That final meeting will find the committee reviewing each and every request and prioritizing the proposed expenditures, except for those proposed by enterprises.
Water, sewer and waterfront requests will be reviewed separately as they will be solely funded by the enterprises funds. Once the committee has completed their vetting and scoring of the proposed expenses, they will present their report to the Finance Committee.
During the final departmental meetings held on March 26, the committee met with Town Administrator Michael Gagne and reviewed requests from the Recreation Department and the harbormaster.
Gagne requested a bundled expenditure for a variety of small items for various town hall departments totaling $13,000. Subsequent years 2016 and 2017 will carry $50,000 for repairs to the town beach building.
Harbormaster Jill Simmons produced a proposal to fund a security camera system that would help with safety and the security of watercraft at the town wharves (2 cameras), and one camera each for Barstow pier, Ned’s Point and Town Landing. Her presentation noted that her computer system presently can support the five locations and would give her the ability to remotely monitor security in the far flung locations 24 hours a day. She also reported that with an internet-based system, the cameras could stream to the town’s web site allowing residents to ‘see’ what is happening in those locations from the comfort of their homes. She had no other capital requests.
Rounding out the evening was the meeting with the Recreation Department. With the Hammond Street tennis courts being funded in part by Community Preservation funds ($50,000) that request was removed. The only other expense requested is $10,000 to repair the beach raft. Looking down the road to the future, the Recreation Department will be proposing an expenditure of $20,000 in 2016 for multi-use fields at Old Hammondtown School and a new playground at town beach in 2017 for $100,000.
By Marilou Newell