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By Katrina Margolis
Hometown Weekly Reporter
This past Tuesday, Lieutenant Governor Karyn Polito arrived at the Westwood Public Library to sign the 245th Community Compact in the Commonwealth. These compacts are a tool the Baker/Polito administration utilizes to strengthen the partnership between cities and towns and the Commonwealth. “This was the governor’s very first executive order signed January 2015. We wanted to signal right out of the box that this partnership with our cities and towns is critical,” Polito explained. “We have a bottom-up approach to cooperative government.”
Also in attendance were Senator Michael Rush, Representative Paul McMurtry, Chairman of the Board of Selectmen Nancy Hyde, Selectman Michael Walsh, and Town Administrator Michael Jaillet. “These are good things because we need collaboration, dedication and leadership to move things forward in our community,” Rush said. “It’s really about working together, it’s about collaboration, it’s about looking at best practices. That’s what folks want, they want folks working together and they want government working in the very best way that it can on its behalf.”
Walsh continued on this sentiment: “We represent a community that wants to deliver back to its residents the very best in local government.”
“Out of 351 cities and towns, we are getting closer to our goal to have a compact signed with every municipality,” Polito said. “What I love about this program is it touches every sized community - rural, suburban, smaller city and gateway city. Second, it’s voluntary. You choose to be a part of this. You also choose what you want to focus on. All 245 compacts are unique, every single one is, because you’re choosing to focus on what you think will be most beneficial.” The Westwood Compact focuses on three separate issues. “High achievers here in Westwood!” Polito said.
The Westwood Community Compact focuses specifically first on citizen engagement through providing technical assistant that will help the town better coordinate and optimize engagement and outreach efforts. The second point is business continuity, which entails working with Westwood to develop document management procedures in coordination with other state agencies and based on the experiences of surrounding communities. The third focus is sustainable development. The compact will provide Westwood with a grant to hire a consultant to help the town with updating it’s Open Space and Recreation Plan.
“As we put together our budgets at the state level we have been able to prioritize our spending around local aid and school aid, we made that promise to you and as part of the compact we have to keep up our end of the bargain as well,” Polito explained. “We increase local aid at the same rate of growth as state revenue.” Polito ended on a note regarding the bipartisan nature of the current state government. “The people that we serve want to see us get stuff done and I think we’ve demonstrated in the two years we’ve been working together, that we focus on getting stuff done, and we feel that that’s working and we will continue to do business in this manner as we move forward.”
