He is a successful businessman, and he is certainly an entertaining speaker, in fact, he may even be the best orator in Barnstable County, but Michelle "Mike" Merolla showed last night that he still has no understanding of the local budget. Again, he suggested that the School Committee should turn all of their school buildings over to the Selectmen to manage because the School Committee has a "poor track record" of capital maintenance. In the past he has talked of the School Committee's legal authority to shift funds within the various lines of the School Budget as the cause of this poor maintenance -- presumably the Schools were wasting roofing money on silliness like teachers and books?
The reality is that the School Committee has never had anything to do with Capital Maintenance! It has always been funded by Town Meeting outside of the School's Operating Budget based on the recommendations of the Town's Capital Planning Committee. Roof money has never been used to buy books or fund raises -- the School Committee doesn't control those funds. (Also, as Sue Sundermeyer quickly poined out -- the Selctmen's track record of capital maintenance isn't much better!)
He's been told that before -- but like every good storyteller, he doesn't let a few facts ruin a good story!
This is not Mike's first foray into School Maintenance. After his last School Committee loss, he was briefly an appointed member of the Historical Commission. His major accomplishment during this period was declaring that the proposed replacement of two large leaky triangular skylights on the 1960 era addition on the back of the Wing School was not "historically appropriate". After delaying the project for several months, and disrupting classrooms by forcing the work to be done during the School year (rather than in the summer when the rooms were empty) he suceeded only in delaying and greatly inflating the cost of the project --- and in forcing the School Department to change the planned color of the asphalt shingle!
Thank God we have such concerned folk watching out for us! Can you imagine the embarrasment to the Town if we had replaced the 1960's era leaky, moldy, defective windows overlooking the back parking lot with DARK shingles! Everybody KNOWS that the Pilgrims preferred the lighter colored asphalt shingles on their cabins in 1620! Mike was not re-elected to the Historic Commission. He was beaten by the host of Sandwich Cable's "Trivia Tonight!" by a score of 8-2.
