A headline in a recent story in the Gazette read: “Oak Bluffs Finds Stable Financial Footing.” We are better off than we were five to six years ago when the town of Oak Bluffs, individually, was having a very rough time and the country as a whole was similarly situated. However, we are not on “stable financial footing.” For the fourth year that I have been a member of the town’s finance committee, we have made no contribution to OPEB, not even a token one. This year we made no contribution to the stabilization fund. The committee’s goal to have the stabilization fund, at a minimum, be five per cent of our annual appropriation not only was not achieved this year, it was reduced by a transfer from the fund to spending projects at our special town meeting. We spent most of our available free cash at that meeting as well. We are no longer in a free fall position and are slowly heading in the right direction, but we need to prepare for some difficult financial decisions in the near future and to have the courage to present the taxpayers with painful but necessary choices on how best to spend our limited resources. At that point I’ll be ecstatic to see your headline.

Maura McGroarty
Oak Bluffs