Sherborn Selectmen Plan To Create Committee To Review Town Finances At Advisory Meeting

The Sherborn Advisory Committee met Monday night to square away their review of the articles on the town warrant before the upcoming Town Meeting.

Several articles were discussed including citizens' petitions on traffic control at Western Avenue and the process in which the town goes through in order to approve the installation of surveillance cameras throughout Sherborn.

One of the more contested articles was article 34, which is a citizens' petition by the ad hoc committee to invite the Department of Revenue to review the town's operations and finances.

Grace Shepard, a member of SOS, spoke to the nearly full room of citizens and various town committee and board members.

“I would hope that we can start this, we can do this, and we can think it is but a first small step to making our government more efficient and more capable of helping us reach the goals we want for our town,” said Shepard. “I’m not quite sure why there is such vociferous opposition on the part of some to this request."

Some residents at the meeting questioned why the ad hoc committee was so focused on a review of the finance departments of the town, which take up such a small percentage of the town's overall budget.

“In an effort to keep all this in perspective, please note that all four finance departments, which this hearing narrowly focuses on, together represents a little less than two percent of the overall budget,” said Sherborn Tax Collector Nancy Hess.

Sherborn Selectmen chair Paul DeRensis reiterated Hess's concerns, “Our feeling was that the town would be best served focusing our energies on the big budget departments.”

“The finance department represents 2-3 percent of our budget and in looking at the standard recommendations that come out from DOR, those recommendations are basically to professionalize your departments,” DeRensis said. “I know what those professionals cost. Our part-time town-based resident semi-volunteers have worked well for the town and in my judgment is the cheapest way to go.”

“I see this article as basically a disguised request to spend more money on the town hall payroll,” DeRensis said.

Shepard stated that “anything that DOR suggests, are that, they are suggestions. There is no compulsion.”

Selectmen Tom Twining addressed the fact that residents have been calling for a review of the town's operations.

“I think the important thing here is we’ve heard people asking for this, in one form or another. It’s critical that we have a look at our operations to make them more efficient, whether we start with the little ticket items or the big ticket items,” said Twining.

“We are really interested in looking at the expenses the town has and changing the business models that cost us so much money and that give us the tax problems that we’ve got,” Twining said.

“I think we should form a committee to have a look at this right now,” Twining said.

DeRensis agreed that the board would move to put on the agenda for their next meeting to create a committee that would look at the town's expenses and operations.

Shepard believes that the town doing its own review would not be as helpful as a review from an outside source.

“One of the major points in having an outside group is that they are outside. They are not defenders of the status quo, they are not intimately friendly and concerned with the people who are doing the work. Which is one of the wonderful things about town government in Sherborn and one of the dangerous things about town government in Sherborn, is that we start to talk about the people and not the positions,” Shepard said.