Wheels Start Coming Off: With Unanswered Questions About Capital Group "Financial Analysis" Piling Up, Finance Committee Member Refuses to Approve It

 

"At this point I will not forward any additional material.  I am tired of people playing the 'gotcha' game, only to try again and again when they fail. "

 Finance Committee Member Dick Trussell, in an email to a resident, refusing to reveal the calculations behind the "Financial Analysis" released over the weekend.   Last week residents found that arithmetic errors changed the value of the report by almost $1,000,000.

Last night the Finance Committee held and emergency friday-night meeting to review town meeting articles and the Capital Group "Financial Analysis."    After the chair declined to take questions from the residents who attended, one Finance Committee member declined to take any action to endorse it:  saying if the committee is deferring any questions, she's going to "defer her vote."

The "Financial Analysis" was the basis for several documents published by the town over the last week, and it's murky nature has raised a lot of questions for the Finance Committee.  At risk is the publics faith in the Finance Committee as an impartial panel for reviewing financial articles, and a review of the draft versions of the "Financial Analysis" reveal a lot of legitimate reasons to be concerned.

A "Financial Analysis" WAS approved at the committee's meeting on 10/19 -- without a lot of close scrutiny -- but the one published over the weekend was completely different.   As it turned out, the analysis approved on 10/19 contained errors in basic arithmetic that, when corrected, significantly improved the results of a "No" vote.

On 10/20 and 10/21 a new analysis was prepared by member Dick Trussell, and ultimately printed, without any approval from the Finance Committee.  To preserve the "big red negative number" that he asserted would result from a "No" vote, Residents discovered that Trussell had padded the "Analysis" with a second 40B project. 

This week, Trussell began to refuse to release the calculations behind the "Analysis."  

The committee chair refused to take questions, leading to the protest vote by one member.

Why the rush to approve that "Financial Analysis" last week?