Special Town Meeting Guide: Money Transfer, Bill Payment and a Town Hall Generator

This week, we'll take a look at each article in the Special Town Meeting Warrant. The Special Town Meeting is scheduled for Monday at 7 p.m. at the Oliver Ames High School auditorium. Earlier this week, we took a look at Articles 1-3. Today we'll take a look at Articles 4, 5 and 6 and tomorrow we'll take a look at Articles 7 and 8.

The Easton Board of Selectmen and the Finance Committee have both recommended that the townspeople vote for Articles 4, 5, and 6 in the Special Town Meeting Warrant.

Article 4, which asks residents to appropriate $133,924 is a result of local aid received from the state this past fall.

"The state distributed an additional local aid payment in the fall," Town Administrator Colton said. "We’re going to put it in the stabilization fund and use it as revenue next year."

A missed bill is the source of Article 5, which asks the town to pay $245.00 to Aftermath Inc., a company that decontaminated a jail cell in the after a prisoner was the source of a bio-hazard.

The bill was missed when the police budget was created in the spring.

"It was $245 to clean a jail cell," Colton said. "When you have a prisoner who has vomit or they soil the cell, you have to call special people because there’s a bio-hazard."

A more technologically geared world led to the creation of Article 6. The Article got an extra push from a record-breaking winter last year, a hurricane, and a rare October snowstorm.

The bill asks to appropriate $85,000 to put a generator in Easton Town Offices.

"The big thing is the server for all of the town’s computers is in this building," Colton said. "If it doesn’t have power the computer system doesn’t work. Then we’re without email. We don’t have the ability to do payroll. For example, when we had the power outages, I was getting emails from National Grid that I couldn’t see, so it’s tough to see what’s going on.

"We have to close Town Hall, there’s a loss of productivity, nobody can work, communication with the police. It makes it difficult to communicate internally and externally."

Colton said that while a generator in Town Offices is a few years overdue, it wasn't as necessary in the past because of less dependence on technology.

"In the old days it didn’t matter as much," he said." You had an old phone. As long as your phone line is up you’re ok. You didn’t have the reliance on computers that we have now."

Colton estimated that the cost would be $85,000: $45,000 from Easton's Capital Reserve Budget and 40,000 from the town's sale of real estate.