48° and Clear
Image
Dear
Franklin Neighbors,
It has been my distinct honor to represent you as a Norfolk County Commissioner these past five years. As one of our 3 County Commissioners I would like to take a moment to highlight some of the great things the County is doing for your Town and our region.
Sixteen students from Franklin are attending the Norfolk County Agricultural High School in Walpole. As an educator, I can tell you that this unique, student centered, vocational experience is a tremendous educational opportunity for our young people to learn about plant and animal science, agricultural mechanics, and environmental science.
As an Aggie School Trustee/Commissioner I have worked hard to keep tuition rates low for In-County students. Franklin pays $5,501 for being a Norfolk County Community while the Out-Of-County tuition price is $31,241. That’s an 83% discount or $411,840 in savings to the town that can be used for the Franklin Public Schools.
A few years ago, the Commonwealth moved on from providing Weights & Measures inspections for a number of towns. The County was able to build a regional program to fulfill this simple but important function ensuring that every gas pump, every deli scale, and every check out scanner in town gives the consumer the right number of products at the price advertised.
Other highlights include successfully managing over $137M in Federal funds through the American Rescue Plan Act. We oversaw a program to distribute those funds to cities and towns through 159 grants that ensured all federal guidelines were followed to the letter which also had the lowest administration costs of any County unit of government. To date not a single dollar of funds has been clawed back by the Federal Government, and every dollar of the award will be used within the county by the end of the grant.
Franklin received $6,422,370.13 in ARPA Grants from the County which addressed vital infrastructure projects in town including:
>Roadway Asphalt Construction and Repairs Town-Wide
>Franklin Food Pantry - Initiative to Combat Food Insecurity Impacts of Pandemic
>SAFE Coalition Mental Health & Housing Assistance
>YMCA - Assistance to Franklin Youth
>Mental Health Clinician –
>Pond Street Area Sewer Rehabilitation Project - Phase I
>Additional Mental Health Clinicians –
>Water Main Replacements - Various Locations Throughout Town including the Janie Ave Area
>Stormwater Improvements - Various Locations Throughout Town
We have also been overseeing a multi-year program which will distribute over $212,000 in grant funding to address the opioid epidemic in Norfolk County cities and towns. These monies have been used to supplement educational and prevention measures county wide and Canton has received two rounds of funding. I was also able to direct funding from this program to support Canton Fire Department’s whole-blood mobile. This unit can meet ambulances from Franklin on their way into Boston trauma centers which greatly increases the survival chances of our friends and neighbors in the event of a horrible accident.
At my direction, we have been reforming and refining service delivery from our unit of government. This process began with an operational analysis, the first of its kind for any County Government, which provided a blueprint for efficiencies and best practices.
We have achieved almost all the goals recommended by that effort, from the centralization of Human Resources and introduction of a new modern personnel handbook to the consolidation of technology into one department managed by a Chief Information Officer. We have implemented electronic tools like building management systems to save money on utilities and created careful capital plans to rehabilitate and maintain our courthouses and other buildings.
Finally, I would like to correct the record on a number of misstatements made in an op-ed in this paper a few weeks ago. I am very proud of the state-of-the-art solar energy generating project we have at the Norfolk County Agricultural High School. The Hilltop array will allow for grazing of small animals and a seed mix which encourages and supports pollinators. The Fisher Street array, will be a fully AgSolar system that will allow for continued haying and the future planting of additional crops underneath the panels. This system will be managed in collaboration with the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Stockbridge Extension and provide meaningful educational opportunities for our students. It has been said that we are clearing 30 acres of trees for this project. That is false. After numerous public discourses and meetings with abutters, and as seen in many public presentations and on our website, we are clearing less than 10 acres of acres of scrub brush and older trees which were planted many decades at the school with the intention of harvesting.
I am proud of the work we are doing here in Norfolk County Government. I am grateful for the strong support I receive from folks who do not fully understand what we do, and who take the time to have meaningful conversations with me about how Norfolk County can deliver exceptional services to our cities and towns.
If you have any questions about the County, please do not hesitate to contact me .
Very
truly yours,
Richard
R. Staiti
Norfolk
County Commissioner.
