Finance Committee recommends $558,000 in free-cash capital allocations, including website upgrade and library roof

The Town of Lakeville Finance Committee voted to recommend roughly $558,000 in free-cash appropriations and related capital articles to the select board for the May 19 meeting (date and final select-board action not specified).

Committee members discussed departmental requests and funding sources before voting to approve individual articles. Committee members said the town’s certified free cash was about $1,400,000 at one point and that the working amount available for appropriation from free cash was $558,000. Committee members also said the town planned to hold roughly $600,000 in reserve and that some items would use other funding sources such as Chapter 90 allocations, retained earnings from the transfer station enterprise, capital stabilization or green-community grant funds.

Key appropriations the committee recommended included:

- MS4 engineering support, reduced from an initial placeholder of $75,000 to $50,000 for program management and stormwater work tied to a state MS4 requirement. Committee members described the work as state-required engineering and said the $50,000 could cover about two fiscal years of support.

- A town website upgrade with Civic Plus, estimated at $30,000 (committee members noted the vendor is Civic Plus and that an upgrade would improve usability, increase site features and address ADA compliance). Andrew said, “the biggest complaint I’ve heard … is the communication in the town’s pretty bad,”…