Templeton advisory committee members spent more than an hour questioning how the town tracks and pays for vehicle maintenance and the repurposing of municipal vehicles, after a review of budget-versus-actuals flagged an invoice coded to Emergency Management.

Committee members asked Department of Public Works representatives and Emergency Management Director Richard Curtis to explain who is responsible for maintenance costs when vehicles move among departments and whether emergency management should have a standalone budget. Members repeatedly raised concerns about transparency and about apparent transfers of maintenance costs into the highway/DPW maintenance account.

The discussion matters because several department heads said they rely on a centralized vehicle-maintenance account managed in DPW, while advisory members said that repurposed police and other vehicles have added unanticipated maintenance pressure and obscured the full townwide cost. Committee members noted prior years’ budgets that showed small direct allocations to Emergency Management (citing about $1,750 in FY2023 in the historical record) and that Mr. Curtis currently reports a modest operating amount (committee members discussed figures around $1,200 to $2,250, including stipends). Several members urged a clearer line-item presentation so voters and officials can see the full cost of town services.

Richard Curtis, identified in committee materials as the town’s emergency management director, and Bob Sosek (department head responsible for vehicle maintenance/inventory) told the committee the town’s current practice is to keep most vehicle maintenance in a single DPW maintenance account. Curtis said emergency management vehicles have been decommissioned police and ambulance units and that day-to-day use is lighter than police usage; he said he lacks sufficient standalone funding to maintain an expanded fleet. Sosek described his inventory and said repurposing vehicles has been handled historically through the town administration and departmental processes.

Committee members pressed practical details: who authorized the transfers of vehicles, where vehicles are garaged for insurance, why some emergency vehicles used diesel at external pumps, and whether charging maintenance to DPW artificially reduces maintenance totals for other departments. Members also said that some purchases and paintwork had been paid from emergency-management line items and then covered by DPW, producing a different picture than the line-item budgets suggest.

After discussion, advisory committee members voted to ask the town administrator and the select board to draft and approve a formal policy describing how capital items (including repurposed vehicles) are to be handled, who must sign off on transfers or reuse, and what approvals are required for moving vehicles between departments. The committee approved sending a recommendation to the town that the town administrator and the select board develop that policy.

Committee members also urged that Richard Curtis prepare a clearer, modest operating budget for Emergency Management before the next budget season so advisory and the town can consider a defined annual allocation for radios, supplies, and vehicle maintenance instead of ad hoc transfers and cross-charging. Several members suggested a figure in the $3,000–$5,000 range for a discretionary emergency-management line item (members compared neighboring towns’ amounts, citing Philipston as an example that provides roughly $5,000 plus stipend), but no dollar figure was adopted by motion.

The committee agreed to coordinate with the town administrator on improving invoice descriptions and credit-card/warrant transparency so that future budget-versus-actual reviews do not produce similar questions.

The committee closed the item after asking Mr. Curtis to prepare a proposed, itemized Emergency Management budget and advising staff to work with the town administrator on written policy language for the select board.

Ending — next steps: advisory members said they will forward their recommendation to the town administrator and select board and invited Mr. Curtis to return with a draft Emergency Management budget before the formal budget season.