20 January, 2016
At the Tuesday January 19th Board of Selectmen Meeting, Chairman Ben Palleiko announced that he will not be running for re-election. Palleiko is currently serving the 3rd year of his 2nd term (6th year overall) on the Board.
Palleiko stated his reason for not seeking re-election; "In 10 years of service to the town and having spent almost half of my life in public service, I have decided to focus my time and energy on my family and other productive activities. I am making this announcement now because I would like to challenge a new generation in town to step forward and I want to leave plenty of time for those people to make their decision and to have a chance to present their vision to the voters,"
In his statement, Palleiko listed many accomplishments of the Board during his nearly 6 years as a member. Some of those accomplishments included successfully hiring a new Police Chief, gaining approval for a new Elementary School, Public Library and DPW facility as well as advancing revitalizing downtown and forming a multi-town collaboration group to defeat a proposed Milford casino.
Palleiko also stated several instances in which the Board successfully managed town finances; "during my tenure the accomplishments of this board include; protecting the towns financial state during the most significant economic crisis since the great depression without dramatic impacts on taxes, services or personnel." "Carefully controlled growth of the town operating budget, providing all residents with outstanding service at a reasonable cost, resulting in taxing residents cumulatively over 4 million dollars less than possible under our proposition 2 1/2 limit." "We executed one of the very few budget under-rides ever undertaking in the state of Massachusetts, guaranteeing for tax payers that an additional 1.25 million dollars in annual excess levy saved through our control of spending would not be reversed." "We designed and implemented a funding process to begin to address the towns substantial long-term pension and other benefits liabilities and thereby prevent a future fiscal crisis."
See more in the video below
