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 Acton needs a comprehensive plan before proposing a new Fire Station
By Clint Seward
February 26, 2007
Acton needs a comprehensive emergency response plan using all available data before moving further with its North Acton Fire Station proposal. The present analysis used is based on incomplete data. Acton is using an urban based ISO standard to estimate fire truck response times when it has yet to be shown that it applies to Acton’s suburban setting, and when actual experience could be used instead.
Acton needs a plan that includes the available data that Acton Fire Department response times are presently better than any comparable adjoining towns in the area; better than Concord, Lincoln, Carlisle, Littleton, Boxboro, and Stow. Acton’s good response time performance was confirmed by a 2005 Boston Globe study (http://www.boston.com/news/specials/fires/) that compared all fire departments in Massachusetts. The study showed that Acton meets applicable insurance safety standards.
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Acton in the 21st Century:
Our Tax Bill and How we got here
By Jonathan Chinitz
February 22, 2007
Once again the Beacon put out a front page article ("Acton keeps spot among top taxed", February 21, 2008) which leaves the innocent reader with little to go on other than the fact that Acton's taxes are high and have been so for quite some time. There is no attempt on behalf of the newspaper to dig deeper into this issue in an effort to provide a balanced view of what got us here and why.
So, given my penchant for numbers, I thought I would give you a slightly more balanced picture of why our taxes are high and what got us to this point. Since the Beacon chose to focus on the period of 2000-2008 I thought I would do the same.
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