I had previously issued a number of Right To Know demands of Gilford’s Budget Committee, Selectmen, Town Clerk/Tax Collector, and School Board. Surprisingly, I have heard from all of them and all within the five business day requirement. Nice.
First one up is the one I sent to the BudComm Chair as I hadn’t seen any notification as to when a Fiscal Oversight session was to be scheduled. The payload of the RSA 91-A was this
“Shall” being the operative word. Please also note that there are no “emergency” clauses that give “an out” to Budget Committees for fulfilling this important duty. For quite some time now, the GBC has been delinquent in performing this oversight to ensure that the Town and School Board budgets are being faithfully followed as voted upon by the Legislative Body which are the voters residing in Gilford.
Thus, I am looking for your remedy:
- Why haven’t you called for such an oversight meeting?
- If you have, and if it was held, where and when was the required public meeting notice given?
- Are you planning on having one soon?
- If so, what is the date of that meeting?
- Will you just be having a rehash of the report that is given to the Selectboard, OR
- Will it be done at the line item level for the greatest amount of transparency (as the GBC does during its budget season)?
To his credit (not that he had much choice in the matter), he actually answered all of the questions (unlike Ann Marie’s RTK to SAU16 Superintendent David Ryan)(reformatted):
28 June 2020
Dear Skip,
You are right that I have not called a fiscal meeting yet. The reasons are threefold:
The town has a new fiscal director and I wanted her to get her feet wet first and also to have the audit done.
Second, the school will, in July, have a new business director and I wanted her also to get her feet wet plus have their audit done as well.
Thirdly we are finally able to meet as acommittee, on the 18th of June we finally had our organizational meeting.
I was planning on having the town in August and the school in September. I have not thought of the date(s) yet, so please just keep looking on the town calendar. And no I have not thought about which method I will use. I have two new members of the committee and not sure which one would make it easier to understand.
Sean Murphy
Gilford Budget Committee Chair
My suggestion is to go the GL Account line item route vs the high “aggregated” level one – it will provide a primer for the newbies. Hopefully, the “old hands” will do their homework and ask hard questions.
I probably will attend!
