CPC chairperson Jane Lopes appeared before the Middleboro Board of Selectman to explain the article that will be included in the Spring town meeting warrant. This Enterprise story reported on the upcoming article – which is required to allocated money that is collected each year for the Community Preservation Fund:
The Community Preservation Committee estimates the town will have $241,000 to spend from the fund in fiscal 2013, which begins July 1.
The annual town meeting on June 11 will be asked to approve article 18, which dispenses the money in five accounts including $13,000 for committee administrative expenses; $26,000 in historic resources; $26,000 in community housing reserve; $26,000 in open space reserve, and $150,000 for budgeted reserve.
A couple of notes. The CPA law requires that 10% of the money is reserved for each of the three core areas – open space, housing, and historic. It also allows for up to 5% for administrative uses. This could be for land surveys, project management, or other things related to administering the funds. We have elected to put the maximum into the administrative fund in case there is a need for it. At this early stage it’s not possible to predict what those needs might be. If the administrative funds are not used within the year they are budgeted, they will automatically revert into the general CPA fund and so can be used for any of permitted uses.