by Frank Schroth

The 2015 Annual Town Meeting opened last night and got off to a slow, steady start. Town Moderator Brian Walsh gaveled the session to order shortly before 8:00PM. Members of the Milton High Chorus sang the Start Spangled Banner, the body recited the Pledge of Allegiance, the Moderator acknowledged and a moment of silence was observed for Town Meeting Members who passed away this past year, and the Moderator reviewed rules of procedure. And with that Town Meeting was off to the races.

Articles 1 – 14 all passed, the majority unanimously. These included but were not limited to the following:

Article 5 which recommended a $1,659,780 appropriation for capital projects. This amount reflects a slight increase from that published in the warrant. The increase was $186,780 for iPads and iPad carts for the schools. This was made possible by recent voter approval of an override for firefighter health costs. The passage of the override freed up $300K that had been set aside in event the override had not passed. In addition to $18K for iPads the Warrant Committee recommends redistributing $33K for restoring electives that had seen cuts in schools and $80K for hte reserve fund. Capital projects funded also include: $400K for roadways, $180K for a bucket truck, $145K for repairs to fire station buildings, and $160K for the first phase of an upgrade to financial software for the town and schools.

• Article 7 which authorizes the Moderator to establish an audit committee of five members which shall “develop, administer the selection pocess, and shall recommend to the Board of Selectmen the appointment of an independent public accounting firm to conduct an annual audit of the Town’s financial statements.”
• Article 14 which approved an appropiation of $3,705,223 for General Government. This includes salaries and wages for a variety of town hall funcitons such as Law, Insurance, Information Technology, etc as well as the budgets for the Assessors, Town Clerk and Treasurer.

(You can find the full text of the warrant here.)

The elephant in the room as far as articles in the warrant are concerned, is Article 15 which seeks to expand the responsibilities and authority of the Town Administrator. Rick Neely, Chair of the Town Government Study Committee, reviewed the article and spoke to why his committee, together with the Board of Selectmen, was recommending it. In short, the concept is to place day to day operations of the town in the hands of the Town Administrator. This would include hiring and supervision of all town departments under the purview of the selectmen (e.g. Police, Fire, DPW, etc), collective bargaining, financial record keeping, and the annual operating budget. This would free up the Board of Selectmen to focus on strategy and policy.

The discussion of the article began last night and several amendments were put forward. Perhaps the most important was an amendment that would have kept the hiring and firing of the Police and FIre Chiefs with the Board of Selectmen. The amendment was proposed by Town Meeting Members Joe McEttrick and Malcolm Larson. They citied state laws that specified the selectmen as appointing authority. Town Counsel john Flynn explained that this article would change the form of town government as it requires a petition to the legislature. TGSC members Bob Hiss and Peter Mullin both spoke against adoption of the amendment arguing that there were provisions that provided the selectmen with adequate influence on the hiring of the chiefs and that to be effective as a “CEO for the town” and have the department heads function effectively as a team they needed to all report up to a single person. The amendment was defeated.

Descussion of the article will resume tonight when Town Meeting reconvenes.

Congressman Lynch was present at the session and addressed the body. He updates all on a variety of initiatives. Two of especial interest to Milton are ongoing efforts to work with the FAA to address health and noise impacts of airplane traffic over town. He acknowldeged that the FAA is very difficult to work with. “They are not known for cooperation. . . [and they] are less htan responsive and less than respectful” to the communities they affect. However, he remains hopeful and will go “lawyer up” to fight the issue if necessary. Congressman Lynch also discussed reminbursements for snow and storm related costs. FEMA has reimbursed for one storm. Lynch said that he and Capuano are pursuing a line of argument that was successfully used by Buffalo which maintained that the area did not suffer a single snowstorm but an extended weather pattern that lasted for weeks in which the temperature never went above freezinf and dropped in excess of 100″ of snow.