[Ed note: My Southborough accepts signed letters to the editor submitted by Southborough residents. Letters may be emailed to mysouthborough@gmail.com.
The following letter is from Al Hamilton.]
To the Editor:
Recently, there have been some misconceptions about the structure of town government and the town’s commitment to providing quality educational facilities. Two of these misconceptions need to be explored further.
We don’t care about education; we just kick the school facilities needs down the road.
This is false. Let’s review the history with respect to school facilities starting in the late 1990’s:
Between 1998 and 2002 the town renovated and expanded Finn School.
At that same time, we built a new middle school – Trottier.
In the mid 2000’s, we funded a renovation and addition to Algonquin.
We then demolished and built a new Woodward.
In the 2010’s we did a mini renovation of Neary.
We recently funded a major renovation of the Algonquin athletic fields, including erecting the Gonkplex.
Every year like clockwork we approve a generous school budget to support our schools.
The reality for the last 30 years is that the debt and attendant debt service related to school building projects has crowded out other pressing needs. We delayed by close to 25 years a needed upgrade to the Police Station and, to a lesser extent, the Fire Station in favor of school facilities. I supported this. Neary got a mini renovation about 15 years ago because the town was “tapped out” with respect to debt capacity to fund its renovation. If you have notice that our roads are in bad shape, that is because we put a priority on schools. That is how we ended up in this situation, not because we did not care about education but because we were fully committed to it.
Taxes will go up regardless
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.”
If we keep doing the same thing then, yes, our taxes will continue to outpace inflation. Our municipal headcount has increased over 10% in the last 10 years. Our population is stable. Labor costs drive the cost of local government and the only way to bring these down is to make our municipal workers more productive.
Our business practices look more like the 1950’s than the 2020’s. We need to invest in systems and automation to do many of the clerical and routine parts of government. We need to restructure and consolidate our departments to control our headcount. I don’t want to take a meat axe to our government but every time we have a retirement or a departure, we need to take a hard look at the position and ask “Is there another way we can do this?
It will take 5-10 years to reverse the tax burden shift which is putting a greater percentage of the tax burden on residents. The challenge for the next few years is to manage our way out of the problem. Our population is rapidly aging, over 30% of our residents are now over 55 years old. 9% of our seniors live below the poverty line. It is cruel to continue to ask them to fund outdated and inefficient systems when we can do better by moving into the second quarter of the 21st century.
We, as a community, remain committed to providing the children of our town a quality education. To imply otherwise is disrespectful to the residents who have sacrificed for decades to provide the highly rated system we currently enjoy. We need to reassess how we house our K-8 population within the resources we have available and we need to reassess our municipal practices and procedures. We can’t continue on the path we are on.
Al Hamilton
35 Pine Hill Road
Thank you Al! It’s nice to see somebody gets it
With all due respect, it is missing the point to argue that the actions of 20+ years ago suggest that the people of the town today are committed to education. That was a long time ago and the citizens of the town were literally different people than they are today, and those who remain are at a different stage of life with different priorities. I applaud those decisions and that investment, and if I had a time machine I would go back and shake their hands. But I don’t, I am here in 2025 hoping that my three kids can have the same quality of education that theirs did. Somehow though, the needs of our “rapidly aging population” have displaced that concern, and while my heart goes out to seniors who may have no appetite for tax increases to fund schools, my sympathy is limited. They are not the first ones in history to deal with this frustration and their home values have nearly doubled in the last 5 years alone. Southborough is not a stereotypical retirement destination for this very reason.
And as for the second point, if there are really that much savings to be had just by modernizing the towns operations, please have at it. I suspect you’ll find near unanimous support for that. I’ll propose the first cut be to the FTE funds used to man the speed trap on Parkerville Road, which stresses me out several times a day. But absent specific proposals on how exactly to streamline the operations without cutting services (or, alternatively, which services you’d like to cut), citing the headcount from 10 years ago as a model for how it should look today is making the same mistake as above. It’s a false comparison: this isn’t 2015.
Dear Mr. Nute,
I don’t know you; I have never heard your name before, but I would like to let you know that your tone is not contributing to a solution to the problem currently facing Southborough. To quote, “…the needs of our ‘rapidly aging population’ have displaced that conern [educating our children] is blantantly wrong, insulting, and speaks volumes about your self-centeredness.
The people who voted against Neary want the ENTIRE community to have input in the decision-making process BECAUSE, GUESS WHAT?, it’s not just about YOUR CHILDREN. That’s a concept, isn’t it. That we educate the children and take care of the citizens who have been the tax payers in this town for decades.
I’ve seen corn fields turned into mega mansions; I’ve seen meadows turned into surburia; I’ve seen historic, stone-lined streets turned into look alike house after house after house — same distance from the road, all facing forward, etc.
I’m not going to write anymore because I simply want to stop defending our right to request that all citizens benefit from whatever decision is made. In fact, in that vane, I would encourage the new, K-8 committee to make sure the seniors, the soon-to-be retirees, and everyone else who resides in this Town comes out with something, like a COMMUNITY CENTER for everyone.
All I can say is “Dear Lord, Please help us.”
Sincerely,
Diane Romm, PhD
[Go ahead folks, it’s time to attack, belittle, insult, miss the point and focus solely on your children. Forget that some folks have grandchildren in the system…..]
And you know what’s funny. In 5th grade my own school had a shortage of classrooms so they moved us to a special one-room building off the premises…. I loved it and still remember it and some of the most important lessons of my life were learned in that one-room school house. It’s not about technology and all the bells and whistles, it’s about caring, attentive teachers.
Diane, I again implore you to join this new committee. Your passion for this town is commendable. Perhaps Mr. Nute’s point got lost in translation for you; the take away I read was that the town should not rest on the laurels of a voting history and continue to strive for educational excellence. Surely all parties can come together with respect and professionalism to find consensus in a design or renovation without stoking further division.
Mr. Nute
I had hoped to provide some context with respect to how we got to where we are when I reviewed the history of our school building program. I do need to point out that only about 3 years ago we voted to upgrade the Algonquin athletic complex so not all of the projects are decades old. I also need to point out that we are still paying for most of these projects.
I agree with you that Southborough is not a retirement destination. It is, however, a place with long and consistent housing tenure pattern. People move here, far more often than not, because they have kids and want a nice place to live and good school, and they stay. This has been the established pattern for decades. We have about 3600 housing units in town, about 89% are traditional owner-occupied units. Last year there were 117 sales of homes. This number is in the typical range of housing turn over. This is a clear indication that turning over 50% of the housing stock is measured in decades not years. People mover here for their kids and then decide that this is a good community in which to retire and age in place.
Parents with school age kids have never been in the majority in town. There are about 7400 registered voters. My rough estimate is that there are about 1200 registered voters with kids in or expected to be in our K-8 system. Of those, about half (600) would directly benefit from their children going to a New Neary. This proportion is smaller that is has been in the last 30 years.
My point is that we are going to have to spend some money in the next few years to rebuild in some form our K-8 system. To do so requires the substantial consent of both Town Meeting and the Voters. It is understandable that families with young children are intensely focused on the needs of their families. However, it is important to remember that to achieve the goal of an upgraded grade 3-4 facility you need the support of a large fraction of the community that does not directly benefit. Dismissing, insulting and denigrating significant portions of that community is a singularly poor way to win their support. You need their votes; they don’t need yours.
Al, I should first apologize because my comment was venting some frustration at you unfairly. You’ve done great work for the town and I respect your depth of understanding on the finances of the town, and I found your video on the issue quite helpful. You are correct that the historical timeline affects the balance sheet today, and that is relevant. I also probably misrepresented my frustration as being that of a parent when, really, it’s more correctly characterized as being that of someone who bought a house in town in the post-pandemic economic environment. Frankly, I hypothesize that much of the dichotomy around this issue is more related to that: when people bought their homes, not whether their children will or won’t go to the new school (though of course there is some overlap).
For those of us who bought more recently, the reality is that we’ve paid through the nose for a house with major deferred maintenance, as-is, at a 7% interest rate. And what did we get for it? A spot in a town with crumbling roads and a school with a leaky roof (in our case, the second such roof to come with the deal). So to hear arguments at town meeting that go something like “I care deeply about education, but… [I’m not willing to pay a plum nickel for it]” is maddening! So is hearing people complain about how the taxes are making it too expensive to live here. For us at least, the taxes have nothing to do with it, they just mean we’re getting less for the extreme amount we’re already paying. That is not to say that there weren’t very good reasons for objecting to the Neary plan, but caring about education was invoked far too often as a disingenuous cover for the most venal of them.
But sticking to the tax issue, given both the school situation and the other capital improvement needs in the town, leaving aside the cash flow realities that led to the recent town budget increase, I’m not sure how you can argue that the tax rates aren’t going to have to go up regardless, historical guardrails on municipal debt notwithstanding. I’ll readily admit to knowing little about the town’s business practices, but are they really, truly, so outdated that we can cover all this cost with some tech and ops updates? Again, I apologize for the tone of my comment, but my position on all of this is really that everyone in the town should get ready to pay up to keep the entirety of town services at the level they should be. (Also, just another plug to pull the speed trap on Parkerville…)
The schools are good because of the teachers. As for the town, all of the farms and woodlands that I grew up with are now covered by McMansions. Yep, I’m one of those old guys who has lived here forever, am retired, and plan on dying and being buried here. Don’t try to drive us out with overly expensive school palaces.
I agree that we have wonderful teachers in Southborough, but these teachers are begging us for better working conditions, and the town as a whole is telling them no. We won’t continue to get the caliber of teachers we have now if we don’t give them the tools to do their jobs.
Plenty of commenters (and letter writers) are weighing in on the general issues you are writing about. So, I’m going to stay out of the fray on those topics and focus on your repeated side note — the “speed trap on Parkerville”.
If you are asking for the police car to be pulled so that you can avoid being stressed out that you might get a ticket on a road you don’t live on, that request would be more likely to backfire than have success.
Since you are a self-described newcomer to town, you may not be aware, but excessive speeding on back roads that are commonly used as pass-through routes is the most common public safety concern that residents have loudly, publicly raised to the police and Select Board.
Three years ago, Parkerville Road residents specifically called on the Select Board to take actions to improve safety on their street. The Select Board took actions that led them to being able to lower the speed limit on the road, which they did in 2023.
Last spring, a presentation to the board by Trottier 8th grade students (as part of their Civics Action project) highlighted that the road was one that residents were still the most worried about safety and excessive speeds on (along with Oak Hill Road). During that discussion, Police Chief Newell reported that, according to his officers, Parkerville Road (both north and south) was one of the roads where they were seeing the most repeat speeding offenders. The board was surprised to hear that north was still a problem given the big speed bumps and the flashing speed feedback signs. But they referred to the south section as a “speedway”.
And at Annual Town Meeting this spring, when the budget increase was proposed to increase the number of officers, in part so that more could be on patrol for road safety, the only motion any voter made to amend the budget was a (failed) request to speed up the hiring of officers. (But buckle up and stay tuned, since the addition of even more officers is expected to be part of the FY27 Budget proposed at Annual Town Meeting next year.)
Beth,
Thank you for updating Michael on the dangers of Parkerville Road south of route 9. I know many people (my wife included) who regularly walk Parkerville and have almost been hit by cars travelling well above the posted speed limit.
I’m not sure why Michael is “stressed out” about driving at a safe speed limit on Parkerville but rest assured the people who walk that road are grateful for the added diligence.
I won’t belabor addressing Michael’s other points other than to say the Al Hamilton did a masterful job of dismantling Michael’s complaints.
Erik Glaser
9 Skylar Drive
Thank you for the context on this. This mostly predates when I was in town but I remember when the officer told me in 2023 that it had changed to 25, which surprised me.
With all due respect, you don’t need a “time machine” to go back and shake the hands of the people who have continually supported education in the community over the past 50 years- many of them still live here. Perhaps that would be a good place to start. Take the time to meet some of these people, shake their hands, thank them for their long history of support to our public education system and have a dialogue about what it is about this specific project that they don’t support, rather than making broad based assumptions that they don’t value education anymore.