The 2020 Annual Town Meeting leaves us with numerous questions, as Town Meetings always do (like, "where are all the people who had so much to say about this article on Facebook?" and sometimes, "do these little electronic voting thingies really work?").

But here's one question I'm considering:

Are buildings that people use less important than roads that people use, and how do we decide that?

It's a basic fact, of course, that people care most about the things they use themselves, and care much less about things that don't directly affect them--or that they perceive as not directly affecting them.

It's also a basic fact that towns like Winchendon can't afford to pay for everything. Public roads, public buildings, parks, schools, water pipes, sewer systems, street lights...the fact is, towns like Winchendon can't afford to pay for most of the services they provide for their residents. They rely heavily on aid from the state, and Winchendon gets more than most, especially for education and road maintenance. Winchendon has the great good fortune of being able to ask the Robinson Broadhurst Foundation for money every year. But between federal money, state money, and private grants, few residents realize how much of the money that is spent on this town doesn't come from local taxes and revenue.

Towns like Winchendon also make a lot of what you might call "devil's bargains" with private interests. They negotiate with developers, property owners and big companies, offering perks like tax breaks, variances on zoning laws, special exceptions and so on in return for things that they hope will benefit the town.

At least, the town is promised those things. Thing like more jobs; preserving open space; affordable housing; maintaining a road in a development; repairing and preserving a building.

And all too often, the town ends up being let down.

So what, then, does the town do? What does Winchendon do with a building under a Preservation Restriction, because the town made that devil's bargain in the 1990s to rescue the building from demolition, which is now deteriorating? Realtors have a word for what's happening to Old Murdock: "deferred maintenance." It costs far more in the long run than it would to keep up with repairs in a timely fashion. It can cost the whole building.

Nobody wants to see Winchendon crumbling around us, especially if we own property here and our personal assets are directly affected by the state of the town. But we're constantly placed in the nightmarish position of having to triage the town's needs. If only we could have All The Things--if only we could fix Old Murdock, accept and pave every road, build a new fire station, re-roof the DPW building, renovate all our schools, replace all the water pipes, upgrade the wastewater system, and do it all without having to raise taxes!

But the money would have to come from someplace, meaning somebody's taxes, or a magnanimous financial "angel" (can we sell Jeff Bezos on Toy Town's charm?).

So every year we're facing hard choices, and the worst of it is, these choices pit town residents against the town Boards and employees, and different groups of residents against each other. It's like a game of musical chairs where there are twice as many players as chairs. When the music stops, it's a scrum--and even the people who get the chairs aren't happy.

Is there a better way to make these decisions? A way that objectively considers the cost/benefit analysis in the immediate future and over the long term?

The Master Plan Committee is working on this question, and if you'd like to contribute your thoughts, now is the time. Can we get Winchendon off this reactive "putting out the dumpster fires" hamster wheel? You live here. What do you think?

Inanna Arthen