Mansfield Selectmen Warn Saturday Meeting will not be about the Budget Gap

The Mansfield Board of Selectmen discussed their views on what the Saturday meeting (from 9 a.m.-noon) should be focused on for the town's strategic plan.

Selectmen agreed that the meeting is supposed to forward thinking, and not about current hot bed issues, such as the current $1.8 million school budget gap last Wednesday.

Selectmen vice chair Olivier Kozlowski said, “it’s something that shouldn’t be bogged down by the budget situation that we’re having now. I still have concerns about what it may turn into.”

Kozlowski said that he would feel much better if the meeting was postponed until after town meeting, so as to have a more unbiased view of the town’s long-term direction, but town manager William Ross said he did not agree.

“I think we go with it on the date it was established and we set good ground rules going into the front door,” he said. “I think the selectmen and the school committee together should issue a release that says this not … a budget workshop.”

Dr. John Mullin, professor of regional planning at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, will be sharing his findings from the meetings and studies that he has conducted in Mansfield since mid 2011. Selectmen said that they do not doubt his abilities to be unbiased during the proceedings.

“That’s his job to control that game,” Ross said.

The strategic plan covers the town in all aspects of how the government and people feel it should progress over time. It covers issues in the municipal, school, roads, private construction, town meeting, business development, conservation, public construction as well as many other facets of the town.

“In the beginning, we all agreed on this process,” selectmen chair Jess Aptowitz said. “I want to use document to move this community forward in all aspects… That was the intent [of the study] and that’s what I agreed to support.”

Kozlowski said that he will still be looking very closely at the results of the meeting regardless.