Articles on Sharon’s town warrant proposing to raise and appropriate money for capital reserve funds proved somewhat contentious among voters at Town Meeting on Tuesday night, the largest of which was originally requesting to raise $150,000 to go into the Town Highway Repairs Capital Reserve Fund. The town hoped to use the funds for grinding and repaving sections of McCoy Road, Temple Road and Nashua Road, and the article was eventually passed after amending the amount to $130,000 to deal with a miscalculation.

Select Board Chair Chet Bowles explained that costs of road repair have “skyrocketed,” and instead of delaying the work for possibly even higher costs in the future when roads would be in even worse shape, they hoped to get it done this year. He also said doing the three roads this year would reduce costs of bringing equipment and crew to Sharon multiple times. 

“We know this is a big item,” said Bowles, “We’ve talked about it a lot.”

In describing the project, Bowles said they were requesting $150,000 because they had $119,000 in the fund already and the project was estimated to cost $245,000 which would leave about $24,000 or $25,000 in the fund. 

Mark Fernald pointed out that Town Administrator Deb Harling had mentioned earlier that money had been taken out of the reserve fund at the beginning of 2023 and wasn’t shown on the capital reserve fund report, which only showed transactions in 2022. After reconsidering the numbers the town recognized Fernald was correct. 

“It looks like in reality there’s $20 or $24,000 in the reserve fund now so even adding $150,000 is not enough to do the entire project,” said Bowles. 

Road agent Sandy Eneguess listed the roads in priority of need: McCoy then Temple then Nashua. 

Bowles offered two options of amending the article, either increasing the amount to cover all three projects or take the highest priority roads, McCoy and Temple, and reduce the amount to $130,0000 to cover those two roads.

“It cost us a lot more money to live this year. A lot,” said Pete Paris, “Let’s do something but we can’t do it all. It’s too much of a burden on the town.”

The town voted to amend the article to $130,000 and approved the amended article.

Fernald took issue with a new article proposing to establish and appropriate $1,000 into a Technology Upgrade Expendable Trust Fund to be used for the upgrade of computers, printers, software and other technology.

“This all becomes off-budget spending,” said Fernald, “We dump money in and the Select Board can spend it rather than coming to us to appropriate and spend. I don’t like it.” He added, “The budget is the heart of Town Meeting. We start creating a whole lot of off-budget stuff – it destroys the purpose of the budget.”

Anne Murrock said it’s not always possible to know when technology will fail. “We are not always going to know ahead of time,” she said, “We need to be prepared to spend that money when a computer dies.”

Sara Tobias said, “As someone said recently, if we fail to prepare then we better prepare to fail.” She argued the article proposed to “establish a fund that allows for responsible budgeting.” She said she was in support of the article as originally written.

Fernald proposed an amendment to the article that would reword it “to be used for emergency purposes of computers, printers, software and other technology upgrades.” The amendment was not accepted and the original article passed. 

The town voted to amend and approve an article proposing to establish an Emergency Management Communications Expendable Trust Fund to raise and appropriate $1,000 into the fund rather than the original request of $5,000. Tobias, who is the Emergency Management Director said the fund will be   used purchase, upgrade and   maintain radio equipment for the town. The radios are sup posed to be used as an emergency backup  when power goes out and with unreliable cell service in town. She said recently they learned that ARPA funds may be able to cover about $18,000 of expenses so Select Board member Diane Callahan proposed the amendment which would collect money for future upgrades.  

“It’s a fact that there is a life-saving entity to the situation Sara is presenting,” said Eneguess.

The town approved an operating budget of $417,468, a 0.5  percent decrease from last year’s approved budget.

The town also approved $1,500 to repair the cemetery vault at McCoy Road Cemetery and remove trees around the vault. Callahan said Jarmany Hill Cemetery and McCoy Road Cemetery –  built in 1795 and 1834, respectively –  were both recently added to the historic registrar. On Wednesday morning Callahan said she meant to thank Sharon resident Gina Goff for making that happen.

Richard Dufresne ran unopposed and was elected to the Select Board. He will replace Gary Backstrom who decided not to run for another term, Dianne Mitchell was elected Town Clerk and an article on the ballot that will expedite approval to add and/or replace additional solar collection units was approved.

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