Taxpayers to Decide on $160,000 Transfer for Road Improvements

On Wednesday, the town will ask taxpayers to approve a transfer of $160,000 from the town’s undesignated fund balance for road improvements.

The transfer has been approved by the Board of Selectmen and Board of Finance and goes to voters at 7 p.m. Wednesday at a Special Town Meeting in the .

The money came from an approximate $187,000 surplus in the Board of Selectmen’s 2010-2011 budget.

Since those funds go back to the fund balance, the town now needs the approval of qualified taxpayers for the transfer, which would be to the town's Capital Improvement Fund for Pavement Management.

The town does like to keep the undesignated fund balance at 10 percent of its budget, Chief Administrative Officer Robert Skinner said.

In this case that is about $3.4 million. Skinner said the town is very close to that number and with $450,000 the town is due to receive from the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection it will go to about 11 percent. The town is due to receive the funds for the Cannon Property, a parcel of open space it purchased in 2008. It had been held up due to a lack of public access but a Canton Land Conservation Trust donation of land on Robin Drive solved the issue.

So the undesignated fund balance will be in good shape, Skinner said.

“We can afford to take this out of fund balance and use it for roads,” Skinner said at a previous Board of Selectmen meeting.

The town had budgeted $400,000 for its “pavement management program” and about $350,000 was used to redo a large part of Dyer Avenue.

The $160,000 would allow the town to complete other pavement projects, including a large amount of crack sealing, a technique a recent pavement management study recommended for extending the life of many town roads.

“We could do significantly more crack sealing,” Skinner said a recent meeting.