Marion Town Administrator Paul Dawson advised the Board of Selectmen on January 8 to plan on attending the upcoming Old Rochester Regional School Committee meeting next week when the committee will discuss the ORR High School athletic complex renovation project proposal it will support advancing into the new year.
“I think it’s important that we be well represented … to at least present the municipal side of this and what that all means and how that might play out,” said Dawson.
Dawson encouraged all three selectmen to join him for the meeting, saying that selectmen, the town administrators, and some Finance Committee members from Marion, Mattapoisett, and Rochester will all be attending to discuss the implications of the proposal, “… Whatever their proposal may be,” Dawson.
“I think there is a movement to move it to the spring Town Meeting,” suggested Dawson.
The ORR School Committee meeting is scheduled for January 16 at 6:30 pm in the ORR Junior High School media room.
In other matters, Dawson gave the selectmen an update on the building of the Town’s fiscal year 2019 budget, saying the process is well underway after a meeting last week with department heads to discuss operating budgets and capital requests. There are a number of subsequent meetings for this and next week scheduled already to prepare a balanced budget to present to the Finance Committee.
“We hope to be able to have a budget ready to send off to the Finance Committee as soon as possible,” said Dawson. “I hope that we’ll be able to have some recommendations for the board at its next meeting … unless we run into anything unpredictable at this point.”
The board tabled the discussion of the citizen petition to ban adult-use recreational cannabis in Marion. According to Dawson, he still needs to review the article language with the petitioner in order to get the article into the proper format.
The next meeting of the Marion Board of Selectmen is scheduled for January 22 at 7:00 pm at the Marion Town House.
Marion Board of Selectmen
By Jean Perry