2017 Town Meeting - Night Five

Tonight was a very good night at Town Meeting.  We closed the 2017 Annual Town Meeting with an important vote, we approved all our budgets, and all the electronic voting clickers got returned.  I was a few minutes late, coming from a boy scout troop committee meeting.  I missed the test vote, but I think I saw it had something to do with Gandhi.  We had a few announcements and presentations of reports, but we were ale to get into it fairly quickly.

We had left off last week in the discussion of the school budget.  There were some interesting presentations regarding the impending budget problems facing the town.  Our last override was a while ago, and we've managed to stretch things out for a good while longer than was thought possible.  We are now at the stage, where we are going to start spending the money we're squirreled away for this purpose.  It is anticipated that we are going to go through it rather quickly, leaving the need for a very sizable override in the not-to-distant future.  One proposal was to try and override early for a lower amount to lessen the shock.  The other presentation seemed to be based on the hope that the good fortune the town has had in the past would keep going into the future.  The real problem is that spending is growing faster than income; always a reason for alarm.  Massachusetts essentially requires municipalities to go to the voters to for approval to keep up with inflation, let alone other costs that are rising faster.  What all this has to do specifically with the school budget, I don't know.

After the final round of questions, we approved the Town Budget by a large margin.  We then went back to some articles that were tabled last week.  The first was the establishment of a reserve fund for special education.  This was created to make it easier to account for the fluctuations in the amount needed to pay for special education expenses.  This was unanimously approved.  Next up was community development block grant (CDBG) funding.  ( I'm always reminded of the 1980's TV show, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, which had a character that said something like "CDBG" every time he spoke...)   This is an endorsement of a funding distribution determined by the BoS and the Town Manager.  The funding happens without us, so this is more of an informational presentation for us.  Not everyone gets what they want, but it does hep to fund some important resources in town.  This was strongly approved.
The next two articles, 30 & 31 regarded departmental revolving funds.  These are the multi-year funds used to manage certain town concerns like ambulance service and field maintenance.  By state law, we now have to have these enshrined in the bylaws, which we approved under article 30.  We then had to approve refunding them, which we did under 31.

The next article was entertaining.  The topic was position reclassification, which defines categories of employees.  One member tried to pass an amendment to change the name of the Board of Selectmen to something gender neutral.  His reasoning was that this was a reclassification.  However, it would require changes to the bylaws and the town manager act, neither of which were within the scope of the article.  It took a little time to get this conveyed, and have the proposed amendment withdrawn.  Classification was approved.

Next up was funding for the Zoning Bylaw Recodification Group.  I am a member of this group, and we are working to cleanup the zoning bylaws.  The last time this was undertaken was in the 70's, so you can imagine that it is overdue.  There was some concern about public participation in the process.  The ARB is sometimes a little opaque about their code work.  I think the real issue is that by the time it gets into the media, all the introductory work is complete.  It is easier to have large input at the small stage.  The ZBRG will be having a public reading of the revised bylaw early in the summer.

With the end in sight, we picked up the pace on a few items.  We approved appropriations for parking operations, revaluation of property, committees and commissions, and water bodies.  This brought us to CPA projects.  There was a good presentation of the proposed projects to be funded under the community preservation act.  The funds are proposed to be fairly evenly split between historic, recreation, and affordable housing.  I personally wish that the Capital Planning committee would not use the CPA as an excuse to stop funding those types of projects in their budget.  I voted for the CPA as a way to fund those projects that were not being funded otherwise.  That is not what is happening today.

We next approved $0 for pension adjustment, approved the appropriation for the OPEB trust fund, no action on transferring money to the special education stabilization fund, appropriation of free cash, and the fiscal stability stabilization fund.  This brought us to the final vote of town meeting, the resolution on a sanctuary town declaration.  Apart from the Pride commission, this was the only article that constituents reached out to be about.  There has been a lot of discussion about this topic in meetings sponsored by the town, in the press, and on the Arlington List.  Any resolution of Town Meeting is non-binding, as we don't have the authority to direct the town's executive to act.  The moderator opened the topic with a denunciation of some of the threads on the A-List threatening TMM's with being removed from office if they didn't vote a particular way.  He then reiterated that there would only be one speaker from each side ahead of the vote.  Apparently several people came to the meeting assuming they could be heard on this article.  The Moderator held firm that he had announced this process at the BoS hearing, the start of town meeting, and at other times.  I certainly knew that was going to be the process.  It did lead into two very different presentations.

The presentation for the resolution touched on the constitution, separation of powers, the need to have all residents feel able to trust the police, and not being swayed by threats to federal funding.  The presentation against the resolution seemed to include every crime committed in Massachusetts by a non-citizen, pictures of diseased people, fear, more fear, and patriotism.  Granted, my opinion was set before coming tonight, but the different tones in the presentations was palpable.  I'm proud to have voted with the majority to maintain Arlington as a town where justice applies to all, regardless of how you came to be here.  The final vote wasn't close.

We then had to close article 3 (the standing article to receive reports) and vote to dissolve.  It was a nice night to walk home and reflect on what we'd accomplished.  I'm looking forward to coming back in the fall for the new Zoning Bylaw discussion.  I also realized that my seat will be open next spring, so I need to run again.  I look forward to dusting off my sign and reconnecting with my constituents.  If you are a Precinct 10 voter, and you have appreciated reading my views on the votes, I would truly appreciate your vote for me next April.

Happy Summer to all!