Marseglia.org

I am Mike Marseglia from Rhode Island. I love this little state and (almost) everything in it, from Lincoln to Block Island. I work as Systems Administrator for OSHEAN and have many hobbies outside information technology: Genealogy, History, Gardening, Cooking, Boy Scouts and Camp Yawgoog.

At OSHEAN I support our Members, higher education organizations (Brown, URI, etc.), government agencies (RI Department of IT, DoIT), and hospitals. I work with the Director of Technology to manage, monitor and deploy Internet services.

I research the surnames: Andrews, Ambler, Marseglia, Ruzzano, Sprague, and Carlson. You can read up on my family's history around this site, maybe we're related!

If you would like a marseglia.org domain name, like matt.marseglia.org, please let me know. Yearly subscriptions available for $15.

Lincoln Financial Town Meeting
5/11/2009, 7:30PM
Lincoln High School

In two weeks, Lincoln will have its Financial Town Meeting. Unfortunately, the School Department has not been cooperating with the rest of the Town. The School Department did not make its budget accessible to the public at the last public session I attended.

The claim is that it was "too complicated" to distribute; however, having previously worked for a school district I am dubious of their claim. Why did they fail to present their budget as Town Administrator, Joe Almond, did, line-by-line and department by department?

It was irresponsible for the Department not to submit a line-by-line budget for consideration. Lacking sufficient information, the public will make decisions based on hearsay and emotions.

The School Department's budget is up this year, as it was last year. Why the increase?

I read a series of editorials in the Valley Breeze, 1, 2, and an op-ed by Arlene Violet, here.

In the absence of information from the School Department, I turned to RIDE's information database. RIDE's data shows the largest expenditure is primarily teacher salaries and benefits. Therefore to reduce the budget teacher salaries and benefits must be cut.

At the 2008 Lincoln Financial Town Meeting I watched a small percentage of like-minded residents motion and approve an approximate $500,000 increase to the School Department budget for no specific purpose.

We reordered the meeting to pay bills, since our Clerk was running late. There were a few questions paying bills which were answered satisfactorily. After our Clerk arrived we reordered the meeting again and voted our Chair and Vice Chair for the 2008 - 09 year. Collections are down for the year and our Tax Collector advised he feels many collections will be late. The Chief's report was good, with 50 runs for the month of October. No movement on our old business. No new business. No correspondence. Chief mentioned that a new State facility for training will break ground at the old Ladd School site. It will open Fall of 2010. Christmas Party, Dec 13th at the Sportsman's Club, 7PM. Chief's Christmas Party Dec 7th, 6PM at Savini's, Wrathburn St., Woonsocket. Adjourn at 8:12PM. Next meeting Dec. 10th.

We had our Annual Meeting of the Manville Fire District last night at the Fire Station. I was disappointed with the turn out. There were very few taxpayers at the meeting. Most of the audience were firefighters who also live and pay taxes in Manville. Even more disappointing was that our Moderator failed to attend the meeting, causing some pre-meeting floundering as we scrambled to find a new Moderator.

The meeting was business as usual. The Treasurer, Ronald McKenna, commented on our auditor's report which for the first time accurately reported our activities under GASB as a governmental agency.

Most importantly we raised the level of pay for our volunteers and maintained our equipment maintenance program without raising taxes. Our Treasurer continues to invest wisely and the subsequent interest offsets our expenses, to the tune of approximately $14,000 for fiscal year 2007-2008.

In sum, I am proud serve a District such as this with an excellent Chief and volunteer staff. The Manville, RI taxpayers should recognize what an excellent job the firefighters of this district do and that their motivation is not monetary but service, something we should all consider.