2015 Town Meeting - Night Two

It was a little strange starting my 2015 Town Meeting in the middle of the discussion regarding the establishment of the Community Preservation Committee (CPC).  More specifically, the discussion centered around the composition of the committee to select the four open members of the actual committee.  From what I understand there were three similar amendments presented on Monday.  Tonight, those three amendments were withdrawn, and a new amendment was put forward by the original three amendment proponents.  It would grant the Finance and Capital Planning Committees a seat at the table to select members for the open seats on the CPC.  A further amendment sought to reduce that back to the BoS, TM, and Moderator.  After a lot of discussion, the amendments were both voted down.  A final amendment from the previous night was approved, allowing for a six-year term limit for open members of the board.  The final vote, which I joined, approved the BoS's initial vote, having the open members selected by the BoS and TM.  At which point, it was time for break.

I had anticipated that my time was up for Article 7, but we skipped ahead to Article 24, the Capital Budget.  That was done to accommodate the schedule of the chair of the Capital Planning Committee who will be away next week.  There was a considerable amount of considered discussion regarding the proposed capital plan, but in the end, it was overwhelmingly approved.  We then skipped ahead to the the water and sewer capital budgets which were approved with very little discussion.

We then jumped back to Article 25 regarding the rescinding of borrowing authority from previous years.  Over the past dozen years, Town Meeting has approved budgets for bonding that exceeded the amount required in the end,  Those figures, totaling over $4M, were still carried on the books, so they were tugging at our bond rating.  After a discussion about whether it would be possible to use that surplus borrowing potential (answer:  no), we voted to rescind the authority.

With about 12 minutes left in the session, Article 7 was called to the floor.  The ARB and BoS made very terse presentations regarding the content of the article, leaving me needing to explain the conception and particulars of the article, the issues, and the vote.  But before I was given a chance to present my own article, the Moderator called up someone else to present an amendment.  It seemed very odd to present a change before actually presenting what the thing was about, but that is the Moderator's prerogative.  I thought my presentation went OK, but I was a bit thrown off by going fourth.  We broke for the evening right after I gave up the floor, so I'm not sure what to expect on Monday when the discussion continues and the vote is taken.