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Everything is Fine in Mayberry RFD
Tedd Tripp
09/01/06
 Now that the summer is over, I am
pleased to report that everything is just fine in the
town of Mayberry, here in the Merrimack Valley.
Mayberry, as you may recall, was that sleepy little town
in North Carolina made famous in the 1960’s comedy
called The Andy Griffith Show. It was here that Sheriff
Andy Taylor and his bumbling deputy Barney Fife oversaw
the normal “goings-on” in their community where
the worst crime might be somebody fishing out of season.
In recent years, some officials have described the town
of North Andover as more similar to Mayberry R.F.D. than
nearby larger communities that constantly demand more
government services and higher taxes to solve all their
problems.
They point out, for example, that North Andover
doesn’t have a major crime problem, house fires are
rare occurrences and the schools do a relatively good job
at educating the town’s children. Simply put, life
is good.
Pride in a community is important. This past summer, it
was great to see the North Andover School Committee
meeting twice a week and finally finding creative ways to
save all of the teaching positions that were threatened
in the spring. At one point early in the year over a
hundred school employees were notified that they may lose
their jobs if the school budget was not increased by
millions of dollars. It was just nice to have everybody
pull together to save these jobs to the benefit of our
town.
Oh, wait... What am I saying? That didn’t happen.
What was I thinking? In fact, the School Committee only
met once during the summer and then only because Chairman
Al Perry received more than 100 e-mails from angry
parents demanding that a meeting take place. And at that
meeting the committee refused to once again revisit a
proposal from Dr. Chuck Ormsby to save dozens of teaching
positions by cutting more administrators and utilizing
health care savings from those let go earlier. One came
away with the impression that the committee was
intentionally trying to punish the community - and by
extension, the children - because voters would not pass a
$1.5 million trash fee at the July 10th special town
meeting.
These financial and personnel problems were largely
caused by School Committee members Al Perry, Tim Pybus
and Bill Kelly signing a three-year teachers contract in
May of 2005 that they knew the town could not afford.
Only School Committee member Ormsby and Selectman Jim
Xenakis (representing the Board of Selectmen) had the
sense to vote against the agreement because they realized
it was detrimental to the community.
Even though some teaching positions were lost, I must say
it was still great to see the school department finally
set up a financial reporting system that would enable it
to track how well it was adhering to the budget on a
month-by-month basis. Since early last spring, parent Ed
Maguire - who is the General Manager of a local high-tech
company – and others had been pushing the school
department to set up an easily understood financial
system to track major expenditures. Maguire even provided
a sample spreadsheet the schools could use. He made it
clear that a $30 million entity like the North Andover
schools needs to know how it’s performing on a
monthly basis and be able to show real-time financial
data to the School Committee and the general public. Any
private company, of course, would be required to do this
by its board of directors.
Uh… Sorry. This didn’t happen either! How can I
be wrong again? The School Committee and school
department have not yet adopted any kind of monthly
financial reporting system. At the single School
Committee meeting this summer, Director of Management
Support Services Paul Szymanski explained that the school
department was still looking into what kind of software
to use. He hoped to have a recommendation for the
committee’s September meeting.
Precious time has been lost in this critical ability of
the schools to follow and control their spending
problems. If such a system had been in place last year,
perhaps the school lunch program would not have lost a
surprising $500,000 before anybody realized it was out of
control.
Finally, I am pleased to acknowledge how great it was to
see 2959 voters show up at the July 10th special town
meeting to decide if the town should adopt a $1.5 million
trash fee with the bulk of the money going to the
schools.
That represented 17.5 percent of the town’s
registered voters, an extraordinary number of citizens
who tolerated the oppressive heat that night to send a
message to town leaders. They voted 57 percent to 43
percent against the trash fee/tax and suggested the
schools try to regain some credibility before asking for
more money.
This last item did indeed happen, I am delighted to
report. The event was a great testament to our New
England town meeting form of government and an impressive
example of “People Power.”
Mayberry’s Andy, Barney and Aunt Bea would have been
proud of how the folks of North Andover showed up to
represent their town on July 10th.
Ted Tripp is an International Consultant
in high-tech manufacturing methods. He has BS and MS
degrees in Chemical Engineering from MIT. You can reach
him at tripp@gis.net.
*Send your questions comments to ValleyPatriot@aol.com
The September, 2006
Edition of the Valley Patriot
The Valley Patriot is a Monthly
Publication.
All Contents (C) 2006, Valley Patriot, Inc.
We publish 9,000 newspapers and distribute in Andover,
North Andover,
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Beach, and Lowell.
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