Council Hears from Town Officials on FY’20 Budget

Next year’s budget season is right on track, and includes town department heads making a brief presentation to the Town Council.

Tuesday night department heads from Veteran’s Ser-vices, Human Resources, Treasurer, Assessors, the Council on Aging, and the ferry service/MIS/EB Newton came before the council.

Steve Roche, deputy assessor, said the town had $20 million in new growth, a record for the town.

“Property values are up and we hope to see continued growth,” he said.

TanjiCufini, who heads the ferry service, said a $161,000 subsidy will be given to the town because of the stop in Quincy. Another $150,000 is coming from MassDEP.

“Water traffic should increase because traffic will be bad,” she said, referring to the Tobin Bridge construc-tion over the next two years.

In other business:

• Kathleen Napoli, who spearheaded the rally about the sky-high water rates turned in 300 signatures to the Town Council to call for an audit of the water and sew-er system.

• The Council appropriated $487,850 to replace lead water lines to residences throughout the town. Funds will be borrowed from the MWRA Lead Replacement Program. There are 840 full lead line services and this particular appropriation will remove 100 of them.

• Somerset Avenue resident Tom Reilly told the council he had been given a couple of zoning maps that showed boundaries of the Center Business District and surrounding residential neighborhoods. One map is from 1937.

• The Piping Plovers are set to return to Yirrell Beach and Manager Austin Faison said he wants to remind people, and especially their dogs to stay off the marked nesting areas.