Surprise Endorsement From Enough Is Enough

Enough Is Enough surprised a packed Hamilton Special Town Meeting today when they endorsed the motion made on behalf of the School Committee and Administration for a capital debt exclusion override for replacement of the Cutler School boilers and HVAC.

At their last meeting (10/15/09) members of the School Committee specifically asked members of EiE in attendance what the group's recommendation would be. They were told simply that the recommendation would be made at Town Meeting, not before.

Strategically, it was a very good move by Enough Is Enough and probably resulted in greater attendance at the meeting by voters. By not knowing the position EiE would take on the motion, it's likely that many more made the effort to attend so as to support their choice, whichever way they were voting. And that was good for the democratic town meeting process in Hamilton. I will have some more observations about the meeting in the next few days.

The following is the statement that was read in SUPPORT of the motion by EiE:

Enough Is Enough regrets that we find ourselves in the position where the School Department has come before us to ask, once again, for additional funding above and beyond the $27 million approved at the ATM, $592,000 of which was approved as a line item for maintenance in this year’s budget. EiE believes that if the maintenance funding approved each year was properly managed and not directed away from maintenance to other sources, we might not have to be addressing this issue today. Soon perhaps, but not today.

Today we are told we have a crisis that needs immediate attention and funding. Rest assured that no other group or entity, save the School Committee and Administration, has spent more time meeting, researching, discussing and debating this issue than Enough Is Enough.

We have broken the question of whether to approve or not approve the motion into 2 major parts. There are other issues to be considered, to be sure, but we think these are the underlying ones.

First, the condition of the existing boilers. It is clear to us that the boilers at the Cutler School appear to have met their life expectancy and should be replaced.

Second, the reimbursement funding from the MSBA. Jack OKeefe has made the case that if we do not move forward with the motion before us, the window of opportunity with respect to MSBA’s reimbursement will close. We believe this to be true.

As previously mentioned, we now find ourselves in crisis mode. The residents and taxpayers of Hamilton deserve to see better long range school budget planning in an effort to avoid this kind of crisis management in the future.

That said, and given the condition of the current heating system, the availability of guaranteed reimbursement of 42.58% by the MSBA - resulting in reducing the impact and burden of the additional tax we would each have to pay - EiE supports the motion before us.

The motion was then approved by about 500 voters in attendance. The only thing lost in the approval of this article was Enough Is Enough's reputation (held by a select few) as a "knee-jerk, anti-school group". Sadly, a statement made about Enough Is Enough by the Chairman of the School Committee at their 10/15/09 meeting was, "We're going to be contending with this group of people in the future and this is their tactic: They don't care what the truth is."

Ouch.

I wonder how they will choose to brand Enough Is Enough now. We can only hope that they learned something positive from the group today.

To read the Salem News coverage of the vote and several comments, go to: http://www.salemnews.com/punews/local_story_290163855.html

To read the Hamilton/Wenham Chronicle coverage of the vote, go to: http://tinyurl.com/yjwacom