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Friday, May 23, 2014

Lisbon Lack Of Leadership: Tested and Proved to be a Mistake‏

TESTED AND PROVED TO BE A MISTAKE

At the last Town Council meeting, the School Department presented the 2014-2015 School Budget Warrant Articles.  This included 18 articles and the first 11 were consolidated and voted on.  Articles 12 through 18 were voted on one at a time.  The Finance Committee was required to provide a recommendation for each of these articles but failed to do so for the second year.  However, the Finance Committee did make a recommendation on just one article.

Miriam Morgan-Alexander

Vice Chair Dillon Pesce asked Finance Committee Chairwoman Miriam Morgan-Alexander why there was no recommendation from the Finance Committee.  Chairman Morgan-Alexander stated she could not get the Finance Committee to provide a recommendation.

According to Mrs. Morgan-Alexander, she was in the Navy as a Captain.  Having spent 40 years in the military, I can say that the military stresses leadership in its officers and that the mission comes first.  If Mrs. Morgan-Alexander was in the military, she should have been able to control and supervise the Finance Committee.  This lack of leadership brings into question exactly what Mrs. Morgan-Alexander’s experience really is.

We did not have this problem when we had the Budget Advisory Board elected by the people.  If you remember, Chairwoman Ward defended the appointing of former councilors to the Finance Committee because the former councilors were familiar with the budget process.  Michael Bowie, Lori Pomelow, Charlie Smith, Norma Wells and Fern LaRochelle are the former councilors and should have known that they were required to make a recommendation on each of the articles presented by the School Department.  This is the SECOND year they did not provide a recommendation.

Apparently, this Finance Committee is not working as planned and lacks leadership or motivation to accomplish their mission.  The former council that dreamed up this Finance Committee is now serving on this committee.  The former council was tired of the Budget Advisory Board not supporting the Municipal Budget as presented by the council.  If you do not get the answer you want, change the process so you will always get the answer you want to hear.

This Finance Committee is a failure and the council needs to rethink the situation and bring back the Budget Advisory Board elected by the people.

 
Larry Fillmore

1 comment:

False Deluder said...

This is the exact sort of thing I was questioning when I brought the question before the town council a while back. The foxes are guarding the hen house. Actually, they are not really "guarding" the hen house. But rather just hanging out near the hen house where it use to live with a fancy self-anointed title.