66°
LEICESTER, Mass. — After nearly nine years serving as Leicester's Town Administrator, Robert Reed announced Monday that he plans to retire in July.
"It just seemed like the right time," said Reed on Monday. "A lot of it is personal circumstances."
Reed, who was Town Administrator in Sherborn before coming to Leicester 8 1/2 years ago, said his official departure would come at the end of July.
"With everything on the plate now — town meeting, the budget, plus the recruitment process on top of that — I thought it would be a reasonable notice period," he said.
"I think I'm leaving on good terms," he said. "I've enjoyed and it's been a privilege to work with the town. I've gotten along well with the selectmen and department heads."
Among the work he found most rewarding in Leicester has been helping the town through the difficult budget years, as well as participating in various building projects over the years.
"I always found building projects interesting, because they were the most tangible," he said.
Yet before his tenure ends, Reed believes a 2 1/2 override will be necessary to help the town through its continued fiscal challenges.
"When 2 1/2 was first voted in, even the proponents said if things get difficult, go for an override. That was always considered a safety valve," he said. "Yet now overrides are looked on as indicative of some management failure. But that's not the way it was ever meant to be."
Reed said the town has reached a point where it will have to either find a way to fund its services or services will be cut back.
"There's no two ways about it," said Reed. "I think it would be good for the town to have it pass. There's a lot of work that's going to have to go into it as far as what the number will be, how its going to be allocated and how that gets presented to the public, but a community just can't go through the revenue cuts that Leicester is seeing."
After his retirement, Reed does look forward to enjoying some time off.
"I've got a lot of books I'd like to read, and a lot of things that have been put off," he said. "I'll certainly miss everyone here."
Reed also said the community is very fortunate to have the people it has working for it, adding that "both the employees and volunteers in local government" have done a great job.
Comments (4)
I do think that Mr. Reed has already basically retired. Because, he has yet to respond to a complaint letter that I faxed over to him on February 3, 2013 that I believe to be a very serious matter concerning one of our town officials!
First, I would like to thank Bob for his service to our town. Being a TA is no "walk in the park", you will always have those like the first two commenters, that feel you are not doing the job no matter how good you may be. If you think about it for a minute, it is damn near impossible to keep both the school dept and the town administration departments happy.
None of us are perfect no matter how hard we may try.And yes, there are always someone who is better at any given job than ourselves, this is NOT a perfect world. When we have over 7200 registered voters in town, and only 4.8%) show up at the most important meeting of the year, the annual town meeting, then I say, " let those who are perfect take the job, otherwise clam-up", it is better to keep one's mouth shut and appear to be ignorant, than to open ones mouth and remove all doubt".
The next TA will have a very tough job for these reasons:
1. The country is $16.8 Trillion dollars in debt, so don't look for help from Washington, they WANT more tax dollars, not give away.
2 The State is equally in-between a rock and hard place, they too are looking at raising our income taxes, and a host of other new taxes.
3. Our town does not yet have enough business tax revenue to keep home owners and renters from going broke due to excessive RE tax load.
4. Until the economy improves, DO NOT look for a 2 1/2 overide, there are far too many families that cannot afford that much increase in their permanent tax load.
Americans have come to depend too heavily upon government to take care of all their needs from cradle to grave. It is time to do what what should be doing for ourselves and NOT the government.
Hopefully the next one will be better!
YAHOO!!!!!!!!