I have had a front-row seat to five Proposition 2½ override attempts over the last eight years.
Three of those were in North Attleboro; residents rejected two tries before they agreed to raise their own property taxes. The amount grew to meet the needed revenue: $3.19 million in 2013, $4 million in 2015 and $6.5 million in 2018.
Although the extra income helped the town recover, officials realized they needed to bring in new businesses to grow their tax base and is why they were proactive in adding an economic development coordinator.
North Attleboro is headed in the right direction.
I wasn’t surprised when Plainville’s first shot at an override also failed. A request for $3.25 million was rejected, 1,479 to 1,030, in June 2020. The margin wasn’t bad considering it was a first attempt.
While North Attleboro’s second request was larger than the initial amount, Plainville officials took the opposite approach. Instead of requesting money that would bring staffing to desired levels, they asked for $1.95 million to restore positions lost the year before.
The vote not only failed, it was defeated by a larger margin.
Officials told me they suspected a significant portion of the residents who voted “no” in the two elections did so because they were struggling financially as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
I certainly understand that reasoning. What I can’t understand, however, is why those people didn’t step up and run for office in last month’s election. There was only one contested race, a seat on the planning board.
Wouldn’t you expect residents opposed to the override attempts to be unhappy with the direction their town is headed? Yet, the incumbent selectman ran unopposed.
It’s as if they were telling selectmen they’re on their own.
Two of those men, Jeff Johnson and Stanley Widak, took it upon themselves to mow the grass in front of the new town hall when there wasn’t money in the budget to have someone do it.
They showed their love for the town. I have to wonder how many residents feel the same way.
Volunteering, however, won’t bring back the three-dozen positions lost in the Plainville public schools.
Keep in mind that Plainville’s district is made up of only two schools, the Jackson and Wood elementary schools. It’s not unreasonable to predict the loss of the positions will negatively impact the education of the town’s children.
The department was saved this school year in part because of COVID-19. The money approved by Congress and signed by the president last spring helped restore some of those positions.
That won’t be the case moving forward.
The fire department also won’t be able to get its second ambulance back in service.
That’s a big gamble. Imagine calling 9-1-1 when you or a loved one collapses. It’s likely Plainville’s only ambulance is at Sturdy Memorial over in Attleboro, or Rhode Island Hospital out in Providence, and would be unable to respond for an hour or more.
It will certainly won’t take as long for an ambulance from neighboring Mansfield, North Attleboro or Wrentham to respond but there’s also the possibility that those ambulances are already on a call in their own community.
You or your loved one might have to wait up to a half-hour for a rescue to come from Attleboro or another surrounding community.
It’s a fact that minutes are crucial when someone is having a heart attack or stroke; the lack of a second ambulance operating in Plainville might be the difference between life and death.
Former Fire Chief Justin Alexander said it best: “You can’t build a staffing model and an operational model on mutual-aid use, it’s wrong, it’s improper. You just can’t do it. It’s not right.”
“Other people’s tax dollars are paying for Plainville for not being able to fill their obligations,” he said. “It’s one thing when you get hit with three, four, five calls at a time. That happens. That’s what mutual aid is for. But if you know that you’re going to get a call 40% of the time and you don’t have a plan to deal with that, you’re not fulfilling an obligation to provide your own community’s public safety needs.”
Alexander is now the former Plainville Fire Chief. He opted to take the same position in nearby Easton.
He downplayed the fact that the stress of trying to keep Plainville residents safe without the men and women, or equipment, necessary to do so, was a factor in his decision to leave.
A town can replace a chief, even one of Alexander’s quality.
That’s not true of lives lost.
