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Clarksburg to Decide Spending, Bylaw at Special Town Meeting
By Tammy Daniels, iBerkshires Staff
07:01PM / Tuesday, September 23, 2014
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CLARKSBURG, Mass. — Town officials hope to clean up a host of bookkeeping issues at a special town meeting on Wednesday night at 6:30 p.m. at Clarksburg Elementary School.

The warrant in PDF format can be found here.

The 15-article warrant asks for transfers and spending authorizations to pay off bills dating to fiscal 2011, to transfer funds from the Sewer Enterprise Fund for maintenance and expenses, to combine three town positions and to institute a minimum lot size for keeping farm animals.

Article 8, which some residents have read as raising town employee wages, actually offsets nearly $15,000 in taxpayer funds for those salaries with monies from the Sewer Enterprise Fund that are collected from homeowners whose properties are connected to the North Adams municipal sewer line.

"It's only applying to the employees who are providing services to the sewer users," said Town Administrator Carl McKinney. "Nobody's getting a pay raise other than what was passed at town meeting."

State law allows towns to spend from enterprise accounts on services directly related to those accounts — such as maintenance and administration.

The article would expend Sewer Enterprise Funds to cover 6.4 percent of the salaries of the town administrator, administrative clerk, treasurer, tax collector, accountant and Department of Public Works, totaling $14,589.72. The amounts are spelled out individually on the warrant.

"We tried to put it in the warrant very clearly," said McKinney. "It's an issue of fairness. Why should someone with a septic system have to pay for anything to do with the sewer?"

Voters will also be asked to combine the building inspector, zoning enforcement inspector and fence viewer. The town has had trouble keeping building inspectors because they are only paid by fees, which has also caused issues when one inspector has had to perform duties already paid to another.

The plan is to combine the three positions and pay a yearly stipend of $5,100 and add $1,500 from the town administrator's salary account. Combined with stipends paid to the zoning officer and fence viewer, this would create a salary of around $8,000. All inspection fees would then be paid into the town's general fund.

Two of the articles are do-overs from the special town meeting in June that passed but were posted incorrectly. The first is an appropriation of $17,851 from the Sewer Enterprise Fund to repair a sewer pipe on East Road damaged by Tropical Storm Irene, the second to spend $2,200 from the Water Maintenance and Repair Fund for an unpaid invoice to the city of North Adams for hydrant flushing in fiscal 2011. The initial request for hydrant flushing also would have come from the entire town, rather than from those actually using the water line.

The hydrant bill will require approval by 90 percent of the registered voters attending the special town meeting because it is payment for bill in a past fiscal year.

That high level of approval will also be needed to pass four other spending articles relating to bills from fiscal 2013: $114 for gas inspector reimbursements; $163.83 to Beck's Printing for the town report; $163.33 to Mount Greylock Greenhouses for Memorial and Veterans Day flowers; and $1,321.50 to Berkshire Enviro Labs or its successor for water testing.

The bylaw being presented to voters would set a minimum of two acres of land for keeping any animal weighing 150 pounds or more at maturity, and another .6 acres for each other animal. It also sets limits to keeping them within range of wells and increases the sizes of lots where springs or shallow wells are nearby.

It was prompted by a number of animals being kept in close quarters within the town.

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