I'm hearing rumors about a BIG increase in the police department budget, resulting from the new contract "negotiated" by the selectboard with the police union. I put that in quotes because I have serious reservations about both the ability of the current selectboard to negotiate and because a selectboard containing one town employee and the spouse of another town employee isn't very incentivized to cut employee costs. Let's see how the selectboard explains their action and how they propose to get the police budget under control.

By the way, one prospective candidate for selectman spoke passionately at last May's town meeting in favor of higher employee pay. I don't plan to vote for someone who has that kind of spending philosophy. There are many Egremonters who can afford a spend, spend, spend mentality. But there are many others who can't. They're the ones who stretch to pay their property taxes and who we drive out of town when they find they can't afford to live here. But we don't want them here anyway, right? Let them move to Hillsdale. Keep Egremont small and beautiful (and exclusive).