Don Lowe First Selectman Column 03/24/25
The Board of Selectmen (BOS) regularly scheduled monthly meeting will be held this Thursday at 7pm in Charter Hall. There is a Planning and Zoning meeting involving the Sherman School renovation project being held in Mallory Town Hall, so my board is giving up the meeting room for that important gathering. Our BOS meeting will be broadcast on ZOOM and the agenda is posted on the Town website.
The BOS held its final budget workshop last Saturday morning and the budget hearing is scheduled for Wednesday, March 26. That meeting features an unveiling of what is in the Town and Board of Education (BOE) budgets and, ultimately, what voters will probably weigh in on at the budget referendum on May 3. If all goes well on Wednesday – no more changes or decisions – then the BOS will accept the budget the next night at its regularly scheduled monthly meeting. At that point, the budget is set. From there it is sent to a Town Meeting to be held on Saturday, April 19 at 10am in Charter Hall. That meeting, after the budget is presented and questions are answered, is then adjourned in favor of the May 3 referendum.
While our budget is not yet certified, I am pleased with what the BOS will be bringing to voters. We still have a few decisions potentially left to make, but it looks as if the combined budgets will result in only a slight increase. In the coming days, Sherman voters will be receiving a letter outlining the entire budget. I know that the school renovation project’s financing challenges our budget, but we have done an adequate job of mitigating the increase, which is what was promised when we presented the school project. It has been eye-opening to see the significant budget increases in our neighboring towns, so I am pleased that we won’t be having to come to voters with huge increases like those in towns around us.
Please consider donating to Mathews Hearts of Hope. This organization was started by the Hatchers, a wonderful Sherman family whose son Matthew was born with a complicated congenital heart defect. I have to tell you that Matthew is a bright light, an amazing and courageous young man, a freshman now in high school, who is going through yet another critical surgical operation. You can find all of this information and the ways in which you can help on mathewsheartsofhope.org.
I love quote – obviously because I’m frequently sticking them in my column. Here’s a favorite one of mine by the great Zig Ziglar: “What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.”
