On December 15, 2015

Simpler question

Dear Editor,

I started this letter to the editor sometime in June or July. It was intended to be a question to the town manager, his first and only response was a press release. Then, the chair of our Select Board Patty McGrath decided to take this question on. Her first response was excuses such as “Irene” and this is “how things are done in town government,” but no answer. Then her second response was “I already answered your question,” here it is again, which never really answered the original question. Then her third response was “it’s really not that easy of a question, things get complicated,” which she also then put blame on a previous board, which I sat on, for allocating undesignated funds to designated funds, which legal and financial advisors advised us to do back when I was on the board. Her most recent letter to the editor was what I considered a just-blast-Jim-Haff questioning my knowledge (or lack thereof) of finances.

I can see now McGrath is never going to answer the question, since she acknowledges that it’s too complicated for her to explain since the auditor’s report was produced after the town report.

So here’s a simpler question: now that you have the auditor’s report showing the FEMA debt that you claim we borrowed from ourselves, can you please show me in the current budget that you are working on for 2016-17 town report and vote this coming March, where will I be able to find this.

I would think it would be in the manager’s current budget draft, I can’t find it. Please show me.

Jim Haff, Killington

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