Tag: 2009 Budget

Cultural Council announces grant recipients, seeks input

The Belmont Cultural Council has sponsored an online poll to get your feedback on how it can better server the community. Take part! This year, the Council’s grants will support a variety of artistic projects and activities in Belmont, including exhibits, festivals, short-term artist residencies and performances in schools.

Belmont family profiled in Globe story on cuts to social services

Bella English’s excellent story about Belmont’s Burke family and their struggle to raise three lovely daughters who were born with Sanfilippo syndrome, a very rare and fatal degenerative brain disease, put a very human face on the otherwise sterile and bureaucratic machinations on Beacon Hill, where talk of “reductions in services” and “necessary cuts” often mask a more brutal reality. Without help from the State, the caseworkers and educators who help them shoulder the load of caring for three profoundly disabled children will disappear, the lives of families like the Burkes, already hard, will get much harder.

The high costs of doing nothing

The town’s older schools are going to require capital investments that are 10x to 20x greater than the one new school (Chenery) in the next few years…and these are just the repairs that we know about.

An open letter to the Board of Selectmen

I’m posting a copy of the e-mail message I sent last night to the Board of Selectman regarding the pending debate about funding for the School Dept. and Town, and the need for an operational budget override for 2009 to…