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Vote against Article 3

I am asking my fellow voters in Milford to vote against Town Warrant Article 3.

For the past 35 years, Milford has been part of MACC Base. The towns that are part of this association up until recently have worked together for the common good to provide emergency dispatch services for their respective communities.

The Milford Board of Selectmen was misled for many years by their representative on the MACC Base Board of Governors. Over the past decade, the Milford representative blocked vital upgrades to MACC Base and put emergency personnel in harm’s way.

If Milford leaves MACC Base, Milford will be throwing millions of dollars down the drain. According to the MACC Base contract, if Milford abandons MACC Base, Wilton and Mont Vernon get all the assets. Assets and infrastructure that Milford voters paid for over 35 years.

There is a significant problem with this plan for a Milford-only dispatch center (Town Warrant Article 3). The plan calls for a single site for broadcast (Dram Cup Hill) with a microwave link from the Milford Police Station. According to my engineering friends, this is what is known as a single point of failure. If the link or the antenna site at Dram Cup Hill goes down for any reason, Milford’s 2.4 million dollar center will be useless. MACC Base, on the other hand, is designed to protect against single points of failure. MACC Base maintains multiple transmit and receive sites across Souhegan Valley to prevent single points of failure specifically.

The other towns desperately want to work with the Milford Selectmen to improve MACC Base. I am asking everyone to vote against Town Warrant Article 3 to send a clear message to the Selectmen that we need to work together with our neighbors and not turn our backs on them.