By David Grossman

After serving 19 years as Lunenburg’s Selectman, Mr. deBettencourt, who started his public career as the town’s younger Selectman, is now the elder policy maker of the five  person crew. 

He is  hoping to extend his service yet again, but the voters will decide his fate on May 15th during the annual town election.  Exiting selectman Tom Mason’s seat remains to be filled as nobody has stepped forward yet to take out papers.

When asked about the town’s FY’11 budget, deBettencourt said “If Joe (Bilotta) was still in office, we would be in the same situation,” he said during a telephone interview this week.  “He would have fought for more public safety dollars and made sure that the town was at minimal manning.”  Currently the police department staffs only two full time officers at any  one time period.

Continuing to talk about thebudget, deBettencourt looks to the schools to make the same cuts that have been made on the town side of the budget. 

“We tried to share the costs with the schools. The town side has been cut to the bone. Health insurance is an area where town employees have picked up more of the insurance cost. Now we have a 80/20 split (town employees pay 20 percent of health care). And in 2012  it will be a 75/25 split.”

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