Budget woes top Franklin's agenda

Franklin's newly minted Town Council agrees that ironing out a financial course for this fast-growing town is top priority.

Councilors elected Tuesday chose Chris Feeley to repeat as chairman in an inaugural meeting Nov. 9. They selected Deborah Bartlett as vice chairwoman and fifth-term councilor Judith Pond Pfeffer as clerk.

Six of the faces on the 2005-2007 council are familiar ones, including Feeley, Pfeffer, Bartlett, Philip Evans and Carlo Geromini. Incumbents are joined by Scott Mason, Joseph McGann, and Michael LeBlanc, former chairman of the town's Finance Committee.

Franklin's budget is the chief concern, councilors said. Officials have struggled in recent years to make tax increases palatable to a population that grew 37 percent between 1990 and 2003.

''It's always going to come down to, 'How do we balance the budget? How do we provide money for all the various departments?' " said Mason.

In the past it's been a tough sell to get Franklin residents to support new taxes for basics such as schools, police, and senior centers. In November 2004, despite warnings that town revenue would fall short, voters defeated a proposed $3.9 million tax increase that had been recommended by the council.

Councilors say now that it's too early to know if they will need to float another proposal for a Proposition 2 1/2 tax override. Critics of new taxes say the town hasn't been making efficient use of existing funds.

Franklin has a stabilization, or ''rainy day," fund worth more than $6 million, much of which came from a legal settlement with the ANP power plant in neighboring Bellingham. This year, the town used $2 million from that fund to fill a budget gap.

Pfeffer said it's even harder to get voters to support new taxes when they see these hefty reserves.

But at some point, the town will have to increase taxes or look elsewhere to support spending, Bartlett cautioned. ''Eventually we're not going to have [rainy day money] to use," she said.

Councilors may be worried about town finances, but some cautioned the time may not be ripe in Franklin for giving the tax increase idea another go.

Feeley, who supported the 2004 override proposal, said the town would need to wait at least until it prepared the fiscal year 2008 budget -- for the year beginning July 2007 -- for another override.

''I don't think you'd get people to vote for it" in the coming year, he said. Other councilors said it is too early to forecast.

According to a report from the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, almost all cities and towns in Massachusetts are struggling to make stagnant revenues cover ever-higher costs.

Increasing health insurance fees are particularly painful for local governments after recent cuts in aid from the state, the report said.

Members of the new Town Council also pointed to the speedy growth in Franklin's schools as more proof that they need to mete out resources carefully.

Over the last 10 years, the number of students in Franklin's public schools has increased 41 percent to more than 6,000. That makes Franklin the state's 27th largest school district, while the town itself ranks only 54th by population, according to the Massachusetts Municipal Association.

Next spring, the town will receive a needs assessment for a proposed overhaul and expansion of the high school, which could run into the tens of millions of dollars.

A new School Committee was also seated in last week's election. Jeffrey Roy, Mary Jane Scofield, Paula Mullen, and Edward Cafasso returned to the committee, joined by challengers Roberta Trahan and write-in candidate Susan Rohrbach. Roy was chosen chairman and Scofield vice chairwoman.

Voter turnout was lukewarm in last week's election, with just 3,119 of more than 18,000 registered voters showing up at polls.