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LETTER: Pease & Degen Will Watch How Our Hard-Earned Dollars Are Spent - by Ginger Vollmer

Dear Editor:
There are three candidates running for two open seats on the Board of Selectman this year: Joshua Degen, Barry Pease and Russ Burke. After doing some research, all three candidates appear to be qualified for the position.  However, for me, the issue of who to support and vote for for Selectman comes down to one basic issue.

The BoS (all five of them) set a guideline stating that the municipal budget should not grow by more than 2.2% for FY2017. The budget that was crafted for 2017 pretty much follows this guideline except for one glaring exception: the town manager’s salary growth. In the new contract for the town manager, his salary grows over 10 percent during the course of the three years but five percent in the first year (and he also got an extra week of vacation and a car allowance).

Why is it that the town employees have to live with the 2.2 percent guideline but the Town Manager does not?  Why did the “gang of 3” (Cunningham, Eliot and Schulman) approve of a contract for the town manager that did not follow their own budget guidelines? This was just plain wrong (and Josh and Jack were once again out-voted on this issue).

Any candidate running for Selectman that agrees that the new contract for the town manager “is fine” is not a person I want leading our town. That counts Russ Burke out for me.

Josh Degen and Barry Pease have a proven record of where they stand fiscally from their respective votes on the BoS and FinCom. I’ll be supporting the two of them because I know they will be watching very closely how our hard-earned dollars are being spent!

Ginger Vollmer

Groton Herald

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