By Breene Kerr

It’s becoming an all too familiar practice for the news media to play fast and loose with the facts in pursuit of a provocative story which reaches a foregone conclusion. Unfortunately, this practice now seems to have trickled down to our own community newspaper, as evidenced by your recent article, headlined “Unbudgeted LAH Town Hall expenses near $1 million” (March 9).

I fundamentally disagree with the central thrust of the article, which appears to make a mockery of the sincere efforts of the many people involved with this important community effort.

The article makes two primary assertions. The first is that the project is nearly $1 million over budget. This is simply untrue. Over the last two weeks, town staff, our construction manager, Mayor Michael O’Malley and I have thoroughly analyzed the expenditures related to this project, planned, actual and projected. Our conclusion is that the total expenditures from town reserves will be just under 6 percent more than the projected $4.2 million. This, despite the fact the expanded project scope now includes an on-site solar power plant, landscaping, a modern AV and network infrastructure, and a possible local cable broadcast system.

Let me be the first to thank the many members of the town hall committee and congratulate them on their fine work, which has involved thousands of hours of volunteer time over the last two years.

The second assertion in the article is that the project will adversely affect the town’s excellent financial condition. Again, the facts simply do not bear this out. As all the committee members know, we have all been extremely respectful of the project budgetary goals throughout the process. The basic guiding principle has been that extras and enhancements beyond the basic infrastructure will be considered only if they have an identified funding source other than town reserves.

For example, the energy savings by design enhancements and 36 kilowatt, on-site solar power system are entirely paid for by grants, rebates and a low-interest loan that will be repaid by the energy savings from the system. Most, if not all, of the costs of the local broadcasting system will be paid for through an arrangement with Comcast. The cost of the donor wall, a public art project which also serves as a fund-raiser, was included in the original budget. In that budget, we also anticipated at least $60,000 in donations. To date, more than $110,000 in discretionary funds for the project have been raised from this effort which is expected to bring in at least $140,000.

Furthermore, in a prudent and well-timed move last summer, the council took action to secure $2 million in low-interest, long-term financing related to this project. This means that town reserves will be reduced by approximately $2.5 million in connection with this complete overhaul of our town government infrastructure.

This is the kind of responsible fiscal management that Councilman Dean Warshawsky and I promised two years ago when we ran for office.