2015 Town Meeting - Night Four

Welcome to the end of the second week of Town Meeting for 2015.  At the start of the night, we had two treats.  First, we watched a video produced by the Thompson School.  Their students held a model town meeting, and the video included interviews with teachers, students, and other participants.  The students were in the balcony tonight to see the actual town meeting.  (Unfortunately for them, they had to leave before we were done with announcements and reports.)

The Star Spangled Banner was led by the AHS Madrigal Singers.  They also sang their program from the Pops concert.  It was great, but between the video, the singers, announcements, and reports, we didn't start discussing articles until 8:45.  That's a quarter of the night.  If we keep doing this, we're going to be here a few more nights.

The first article of the night was on the adoption of local option taxes.  This is a placeholder in case the state passed legislation allowing for such local taxes.  Since there wasn't any legislation, there was a positive vote for no action.  This was followed up with the approval of the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) allocation.  This is federal money that is allocated to certain specific categories.  We cannot change the allocation, so after a little clarifying discussion, we voted to endorse the allocation.

Next up was Article 19, approval of the revolving funds.  These are independent funds created by town meeting to hold money across budget years.  The major discussion was in regards to the Life Support Services, and whether the town is giving too much money to Armstrong Ambulance.  The fire chief assured the meeting members that is not the case.  We are lucky to have such well qualified first responders in our town.  The revolving funds were overwhelmingly approved.

The article on collective bargaining was tabled until next Monday so the final negotiations for the final union can be completed ahead of our voting on the agreements.  The passed the proposed position reclassifications from the personnel office.  This annual vote takes into account changes in staffing in the town departments.  This was readily approved.

We then started on the most important function of town meeting, review and approval of the town budgets.  As we have done for several years, the moderator reads through the budget titles, and members call "hold" if they want to discuss that budget.  We then go back to the top of the list and discuss each in turn.  While there are some questions about some budget figures, the time is mostly used to publicly ask questions of the various departments.  Some questions drift a bit, but for the most part, things are discussed amiably.  We made it most of the way through the various budgets before the night was through.

I was a little surprised by the number of members calling for an end to debate on individual budgets.  The budget is the most important thing we do, and it really is the only public forum to discuss questions with the heads of departments.  Each time the vote was held to terminate debate, I voted no, but I was always well in the minority.

I really missed having a bake sale in the side aisle tonight.  It can be hard to find a cup of coffee within a five minute walking radius of town hall at 9:30.  I hope another group will take advantage our captivity to ply us with caffeine and sugar.