Acton Republican Town Committee

Let’s say you are Acton town manager for a day, and taxpayers gave you a rainy-day fund that if you don’t spend it now, will then be used elsewhere in the budget. You've always wanted to highlight a path across Main Street to the flagpole and cannon. Your choices are either $97,000 for brick and cobblestones or a few hundred dollars for labor and paint. Which do you choose?

You took the paint route? Great choice!  We think alike, although not spending even the few hundred dollars for paint might be a great option too. 

The current style of making choices like this leads to yearly tax-to-the-max tax increases. The better style, in my opinion, is made when selectman set more fiscally responsible rules for discretionary spending of this nature.  Wouldn’t it be a nice change if this year-end money was not automatically spent, and instead applied to something pressing in the following year?