Local Government

Daily Buzz | Grant Allows for Solar Array at Mill Pond, No School Today

Also, the Buzz makes an appearance on NPR

Nicci Kadilak

— 4 min read
Daily Buzz | Grant Allows for Solar Array at Mill Pond, No School Today

Good Morning, Burlington!

Happy Pi Day! The Buzz is letting its nerd flag fly high today with a special Tuesday comic—be sure to read to the end!

Also—There will be no school in Burlington today. There was a call last night asserting otherwise, but another one came in at 5:12 this morning apparently reversing that decision. Now that that’s out of the way...

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Grant Allows for Solar Array at Mill Pond

At the Select Board meeting last night, DPW director Bryan White and Business Manager Rachel Leonardo presented their budget along with a few tidbits that residents will find interesting. Not mentioned below, yet a recurring theme in everything budgetary: Inflation has increased the cost of basically everything.

  • Demand for large recycling toters has dropped off, but the DPW still has them! So don’t forget to call 781-270-1670 and request yours. There’s no firm plan to install new cardboard dumpsters yet, and it sounds like the DPW is just waiting to see how it goes with the large toters.

  • This year we had a snow removal deficit of about $250,000 (not including whatever is going on out there today). But that doesn’t mena we don’t have the money to cover it: The state allows us to overspend our snow removal budget because it’s so important to the functioning of the town, and so we underbudget the allocation each year for snow removal while having a surplus in the general budget. That way, if it doesn’t snow, we won’t be stuck with a bunch of funding we don’t need and if it does, we can just shift it from the general budget to the snow removal budget. So that’s what the Select Board voted to do last night. I imagine that will be happening again after this storm.

  • Burlington joined Green Communities back in 2019 and committed to reduce our energy footprint by 20% in five years. After two annual reports, our energy footprint is down 11%, and the town is receiving two grants to usher along that process:

    • Air sealing the last two town buildings, the TownHall and Town Hall Annex (required prior to updating HVAC)—72% of this project will be subsidized by Green Communities

    • A DEP grant targeting waste water and drinking water has been awarded to Burlington to cover 90% of the installation of a solar array and weatherization of the Mill Pond building.

Today in Burlington

No word yet if any of these will be canceled due to the weather; if you plan to attend any of these events in person, please be sure to call or check the website ahead of time.

Meetings and Events

Pi Day Funny

Since there are no sports on the calendar, I’m co-opting this section for a brief Pi Day celebration.

Pi - a web comic by Seth Black
Happy Pi Day - "off the mark" comic by Mark Parisi | Facebook

Take care, neighbors. See you tomorrow.

Nicci

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