Senior Center Level Services Proposed Budget – Charge Seniors for Trash Pickup!!!

The Senior Center presented their budget for level services to the Finance Committee. This budget gives the Senior Center Director a 26.5% increase in salary and the Outreach Coordinator an increase of 24.8% with an additional 10 hours per week for a total of 40 hours per week. Therefore, with an additional 20 hours of staff of time the center will NOT be open any additional hours but only the FIVE (5) hours as it is now.

Compare this to Natick and Westwood whose Directors work 40 hours per week and their centers are open 8.5 hours a day and 7.5 hours per day, respectively. Or the Directors of the Centers in Sudbury and Franklin who work 35 hours per week and whose Centers are open 7 and 7.5 hours per day, respectively.

Further, the response of the Chairman of the Finance Committee was astonishing – not that we need to keep a level funded budget but rather that he “threw out” what if we charged seniors for trash pickup? He suggested that some of the money would go to the Senior Center and some to the General Fund.

Is the philosophy of the Finance Committee if you go above the level funded guideline we will get the money from the residents so that you obtain whatever you ask for even a more than 25% increase in your salary and pension in this difficult fiscal time?

Seniors citizen should not be charged for trash pickup to give someone a more than 25% increase in their salary and pension.

Who will stop this runaway spending, the Selectmen who oversee the Senior Center Budget or the Finance Committee?