Town Officials Can't Take The Heat

Feeling scorched, Town Meeting revisited the shameful pool closing decision and reversed course—the pools will open. Unfortunately no such luck with the money pit Golf Course. And that too, is only going to get hotter.

Last night for the first time in memory Cherry Hill came up early in the meeting…first no less.

Since the Town Manager had stated many times publicly and privately that he wanted to give Cherry Hill one year to ascertain the effectiveness of this new management ‘surge’ (with only a one-quarter time LSSE bureaucrat in command perhaps ‘drip’ is a better description) I honestly thought Town Meeting might agree to hold him to his word.

My motion was to give them $150,000--more than enough money to get from July 1’st to fall/winter closing (giving new management fifteen months total), and then do a mid-year analysis and see if the surge is working. If not, put it out to bid or put a bullet in its head (fade to black).

Select person Hwei-Ling Greeney and, twice now, prosecutor Rich Morse have tried to get a strait answer number out of the Town Manager to use as a benchmark for success or failure. He simply refuses to go there.

On May 31 Mr. Shaffer told the Select board Cherry Hill had generated $174,412. Interestingly the math challenged Ms. Awad warned him to be careful with his figures.

According to the Comptroller Cherry Hill is a few thousand under his figure (that, amazingly he described as "up almost 10%") and last year was at $167,897 or only about 3% less than current. So factoring in inflation, they are exactly where they were a year ago with only June remaining in the Fiscal Year.

And with a rainy June thus far they will be lucky to hit the same $28,771 from last year. But even with a 10% surge that still only closes June with $31,648 and a Fiscal year total just under $205,000 or less than last year’s revenue goal of $206,903.

With the FY07 budget as approved by Town Meeting Cherry Hill requires $224,000 to break even. Last week the Finance Committee used an emergency$16,400 transfer from the Reserve Fund cover budget overruns. So $19,000 in revenues shortfalls combined with $16,400 in budget overruns comes to losses of over $35,000… when we could have privatized the White Elephant for a positive $35,000.

Last year Cherry Hill lost $59,649, a 20% greater subsidy than the War Memorial Pool. Next year will be worse. “When will they ever learn? When will they…ever learn.”

From: Aldrich, Sonia
To: amherstac@aol.com
Cc: Shaffer, Larry
Sent: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 10:57 am
Subject: RE: Cherry Hill

Larry,

We won’t have the May revenues finalized until the end of the week. The funds are in the bank just the allocations have not been completed…..busy time of year. The total recorded to date for May is $37,581.21 and year-to-date $171,399.80.

Sonia


Hey Sonia,
So about how much more could it be for May? A few thousand, or ten thousand?
Larry

To: amherstac@aol.com
Cc: Shaffer, Larry
Sent: Mon, 11 Jun 2007 12:00 pm
Subject: RE: Cherry Hill

A couple days, a few hundred maybe a thousand.
Sonia