Interpretation Problem In Falmouth

Falmouth’s FINCOM approved the expenditure of $278,000 for Special Counsel for FY2015 and is recommending the same to Falmouth’s Fall Town Meeting. The Falmouth Enterprise reports (10/24/14 – Finance Committee To Recommend $4.1 Million In Capital Spending) the majority of Special Counsel funding ($175,000) is associated with wind turbine litigation.

Town Meeting might remember a few short months ago (April) when FINCOM urged the Town’s legislative branch to approve $300,000 and further proclaimed the amount would begin to replenish the depleted Wind Turbine Reserve Account (1 million dollars allocated by Town Meeting in FY2009).

FINCOM said in April that the Town must set-aside a subsidy of $176,859 to cover its fiscal year wind turbine expenses and debt service. FINCOM now recommends Town Meeting approve $175,000 to cover wind turbine litigation costs.

If proposed Special Counsel fees should come from the Wind Turbine Reserve Account calculations indicate that April’s $300,000 appropriation will be, spent. Gone. Empty. Blown away.

Or, it might be that the proposed Special Counsel fees are an ‘add-on’ or an additional appropriation to the $123,141 balance remaining in the Wind Turbine Reserve Account.

It’s become clear that Fall Town Meeting requires some answers. Falmouth tax payers, after all, know $$$ doesn’t grow on trees or turbines. Answers are necessary, especially when 6 months ago the appropriation of $300,000 was acting in “a sound business like manner”. That was the term flaunted so often by the Town manager and FINCOM last April.

Makes me wonder... what is Town Hall’s interpretation of  “a sound business like manner”?