Two complicated issues dominated the discussion at the Parks and Recreation Commission’s Nov. 27 meeting: boat storage and budget. About seven community members attended the meeting to weigh in on the first issue.
Harbormaster Bob O’Shea restated that the problems with the current boat lottery system are too many people wanting boat storage and not enough room to build more racks to accommodate them. He said there could be some tweaks to the system but that they all have their downsides. Vertical racks would hold more boats but can more easily fall over; kayaks sharing a slot make for more difficult access; even if there were space, additional racks still would not meet the increasing requests for storage. Pam Erdos of Madigan Lane said that she would like to see the commission do a master plan for the entire beach property. Carl Nocka of Shaker Road, who called himself a frequent boater and said he would like to continue to have storage for his own boat, suggested smaller racks for kayaks. In response to the idea that a lottery winner could be assigned a rack but not a specific slot, Beth Williams, co-chairwoman of the Council on Aging board, expressed concern about seniors who might get left with a storage spot they could not access. O’Shea assured her that seniors would be accommodated under whatever system was decided upon.
O’Shea, who has proposed switching to a key system, where all boats stored at the beach would be rentals, pointed out that “we currently rent boats and canoes, but nobody uses them.” If rental were the only option, Fred Silverstein asked how one could access a key during hours when the beach isn’t staffed. He said he was asking because of fishing. “Actually, it’s my wife who fishes and I’m the hero,” he said to puzzled faces. “She fishes, he rows,” he added, to bursts of laughter. In answer to the concern, O’Shea explained that the key system operates during whatever hours it is programmed for. The discussion ended with O’Shea affirming that finding a solution is complicated and offering to work out cost and revenue estimates for a key system.
Reporting hampers budgeting
In moving on to a discussion of the budget, treasurer Frank Culmone reported that his Nov. 14 presentation to the Board of Selectmen “did not go well.” He said the board was running an hour behind and everyone seemed tired. Culmone said when he was asked to respond to the first question about the beach director’s salary, his answer was questioned by Assistant Town Administrator Marie Sobalvarro and he hadn’t known how to respond to her. And things went downhill from there, he said. Culmone admitted that he was not well prepared, and other members of the commission expressed regrets that they had not been there to back him up. At the suggestion of commission member Joseph Reynolds, the group agreed they would like the opportunity to meet again with the selectmen to discuss their budget.
In the course of the budget conversation, the commissioners discussed how complicated it is to handle their finances. Their system of reporting revenue does not fit with the town’s system, which makes it difficult to corroborate income. Too much manual input of revenue from different sources—money collected at the beach, by mail, and online—makes it hard to track income, and Town Hall isn’t classifying revenue. Reynolds commented that Town Hall should issue beach stickers in the same way it handles Transfer Station stickers. “Parks and Rec needs to focus on Parks and Rec stuff, not problems of finance,” he added.
