Commentary by Frank Schroth

The last Town Meeting was a bit of a muddle. One long-time town meeting member said, “I’ve been to a lot of town meetings and I have never seen anything quite like last night.” He was referring to Monday’s session, when there was the confusion over article 1 (e.g. Why appoint a government review committee when we already have one?) In addition, there was a standing vote, not on an article, but on an amendment to article 2. That amendment, not a friendly one, struck a sentence that would make it a responsibility of the Town Clerk to cooperate with the schools to raise student awareness of  the importance of town meeting. Even members of the school committee were of two minds on that. And it is noteworthy that the Planning Board was figuratively absent from town meeting.

Article 1 was a Citizens petition to have the moderator appoint a committee to study town government (I had signed the petition). The town already has such a committee. One town meeting member said it was initially confusing. “Why have two committees? But as town meeting progressed, I understood why we need a town government study committee appointed by the Moderator.” An amendment to the article that would have the moderator appoint 5 of 9 members to the existing committee passed (see related post here.) I signed the petition for three reasons: 1) in my opinion the selectmen had undermined the initiative of a citizen to put a matter before town meeting by exercising their power to appoint a committee in advance of town meeting hearing that citizen’s petition and thereby making that petition moot 2) viewed individually, the members of the selectmen-appointed committee all have their merits, but taken as a group they lack diversity. Many are lifelong residents. It is a committee appointed by the board of selectmen that is tasked in part to review the board of selectmen and has two former members of the board of selectmen sitting on it. Does that sound right? 3) The town moderator’s appointments will help achieve balance on the committee in terms of point of view, demographic, and representation.

When the amendment for article 2 came to a voice vote it was unclear which way the vote went. The article, a recommendation from the Town Government Study Committee (TGSC), sought to have the Town Clerk use local media and other channels of communication to encourage residents to be involved in town meeting. Part of that effort would be to cooperate with the schools. Hey, not so fast – Ms. Sheridan, Chair of the school committee, did not see the need for that as there was already good communication between the schools and town hall. Leroy Walker, a member of both the school committee and the TGSC, said he could not see how anyone could fault an attempt to seek cooperation and promoting civic engagement. Clearly, there was a little bit of a schism there. The moderator said, “Let’s try this again.” This resulted in the two sides simply yelling louder and with no position clear, so it went to a standing vote. One member of the media leaned over to me and said, “I can’t believe you are going to a standing vote on an amendment.”  The amendment passed. The town clerk is not required to cooperate with the schools. The article also passed, but at least two town meeting members wondered aloud, “Shouldn’t we all be tasked with improving participation in town meeting?”

But perhaps most problematic was the absence of the Planning Board. Perhaps all five members were present both days from the start of the session to the end — or perhaps not. Regardless, planning articles were largely absent from the warrant for fall town meeting, a meeting that was made a regular part of the legislative calendar in large part to deal with planing issues and zoning concerns. The planning board elected to pull five articles from the warrant in advance of town meeting. Two more were referred back for further study which led one member to ask, “What are we meeting for?”

One of the articles referred back was a recommendation from the TGSC to add an alternate member to the board. But referring back for “further study” is a bit of balderdash. The TSGC did study it and made a reasonable recommendation. The reason it was referred back is because the planning board could not find time between last April when the recommendation was published in the TSGC’s report and October (i.e. five months) to meet with any member of the TSGC to discuss it.

A natural question to ask is whether those 7 articles will now be put on the warrant for spring’s town meeting. That will put a burden on the warrant committee and town meeting. One can only hope that when the warrant closes in December, the Planning Board will have all their articles in a row.