Arlington Town Meeting

One of my campaign points (see the Q&A in the Advocate) was that if elected, I would like to see final votes on articles, and lists of postponed/tabled articles and notices of reconsideration posted on the Town website and in the hall.

Whether coincidence or not, the Town website is now posting those very things.

I’d still like to see those (especially the tabled/postponed/notices lists) posted in the hall as well. I’m sure many TMMs aren’t online.

Absent a special town meeting, that’s it until next year.

It seems so weird to be done with TM by mid-May. Seven sessions is the shortest meeting I’ve been in over my 11 years in TM (next shortest was 10, I think). Not unrelatedly this was the shortest warrant I’d ever seen, and one with only two zoning articles. So right from the top it was clear that absent some strange controversies we’d finish quite a bit sooner than usual.

I was glad that Elsie Fiore made the statement she did at the end and received the long ovation. She was right on. I’ve been on record elsewhere as saying I felt Article 67 was not an appropriate subject to be before TM, but there is no excuse for not even being willing to hear out the proponents. The Moderator did the right thing by refusing to recognize a motion to terminate debate before the proponents even had a chance to speak, and once the Moderator made it clear to Mr. Daly that the motion would not be taken until the proponents spoke, Mr. Daly did not do himself proud by interrupting and otherwise demanding the floor.

As for the Moderator, it will be very strange (but interesting!) to see Mr. Worden down on the floor and (presumably) addressing the meeting as a non-neutral for the first time in my tenure. Based on remarks he’s made, letters to the editor he’s written, etc. over the years I have some suppositions on what sorts of positions he might take on various issues and it’ll be amusing/educational to see how right or wrong I may be.

It will also be strange to see a new moderator up on stage for the first time in my tenure. I’ll be immodest enough to hope it turns out to be me, but I know it will take a hard race to get there, should I go forward with putting my hat in the ring.

Ever since I heard about the anti-spanking resolution, I had a tickle of familiarity in the back of my mind. I finally looked at my old notes and discovered that on 12 June 2003, under Article 82 of that year’s warrant, we faced what sounds like a similar resolution to the one under this year’s Article 67. The 2003 Article 82 discussion went as follows:

• Mr. Fuller introduced Ms. Wolf, who spoke about the negatives of corporeal punishment. She said that the proposed resolution would not impose any legal obligations or liabilities on the town, and was not about legalities or forcing people. She said that if such a policy encouraged people to come forward for help, that would be wonderful. She said it is a proper topic for TM because it is everyone’s business and that if the resolution helps one child, it will be worth it.
• Mr. Kohl said this was not an appropriate subject to be considered by TM and urged the resolution’s defeat.
• Mr. Adams moved the previous question – debate terminated.
• Resolution was defeated on a voice vote.

Aside from the Venner Rd article (Article 20), the remaining articles are 38, 39, 56-67, for a total of fourteen.

Articles 38 and 39 are the collective bargaining ones, but since the word on the street is that there are no pending agreements, Article 38 will likely be a quick “no action” vote after a brief explanation of where negotiations stand, and Article 39 will be a quick vote to set aside money to fund the agreements when they ultimately happen.

Article 56 (appropriation for Minuteman Senior Services) may draw some discussion, since FinComm recommended no action, as may Article 58 (appropriation for 200th Anniversary Committee) because FinComm recommended $1,000 but the committee wants $6,200. Articles 57 and 59-64 are routine and will likely be voted on with little or no discussion.

Article 65 seems uncontroversial to me, though if some built-up resentment was behind the filing of the article (I have no idea if there was or not), then there could be some venting. That aside, I can easily see it being voted with little discussion.

Since (according to the BOS report) there are no obligations on the Town or property owners to have pieces of Mass Ave declared a scenic byway, Article 66 should also not take up much time.

So the drivers will be Article 20 (Venner Rd) and Article 67 (Anti-spanking resolution). I think that if the Venner Road matter is concluded by 22:00, we will finish on Monday because the remaining hour will leave enough time to get through everything else and begin debate on Article 67. With Article 67 underway, I believe the meeting will turn down a motion to adjourn at 23:00 and instead will stay and finish the meeting rather than come back for a short session on Wednesday. Staying late may well happen even if Venner Road goes past 22:00, maybe even to 22:30.

As for Article 67 itself, I think either debate will be terminated very quickly (for example, a “pro” speaker, a “con” speaker, and then the motion to end debate — as happened with the Anti-spanking resolution back in 2003), or will go on for a long time. I don’t think there will be a middle ground.

I believe we will be able to finish on Monday, though that depends on how long the Venner Road article takes, and it could take some time, as the whole thing is very complex, emotion, getting heated, and I think has another couple of twists and turns yet to come. There’s also the problem of figuring out whom to believe.

But once that’s done, there’s not much left. There are a few routine FinComm articles left (though perhaps there will be a clash between the 200th Anniversary Committee, which wants $6,200 and FinComm, which voted to give them $1,000), a couple of BOS articles which should be uncontroversial, and then the spanking article.

So if Venner Rd is done by 21:30, I think we can finish for sure. If it goes on much past that it’ll be interesting to see if the meeting is willing to stay past 23:00 to finish up and not have to come back on the 17th. It has happened before. I remember one year where stayed past 23:30 to finish up and avoid having to come back one more night for less than an hour.

One other thing — it came out in tonight’s session that the reason for the streetlight outage in the Heights last year was that power outages screwed up the timers. I have to say that my jaw dropped at that. Even since I was a kid, all the streetlights I’ve been around were obviously photocell controlled (by virtue of seeing them come on when weather conditions, etc. made it dark enough out regardless of time-of-day), so I never would have thought timers would be used anymore — because of the power outage issue the Heights experienced and because of wanting the ability for the lights to turn on whenever it was dark enough (due to weather conditions) and not at set times. Thankfully, we were told that the timer system has been converted to a photocell system. Here’s hoping that the next time the Town has to buy new lighting that it go with photocells in the first place.

The big news of the night is that after 18 years with the gavel, Mr. Worden announced it is “time to return to the floor” and that he will not seek re-election when his current term expires next spring. He received a long standing ovation.

I wonder if he had been considering this for a few years and if it was at least a partial impetus towards his request for the creation of an annually elected by the Meeting assistant moderator position.

The race next spring ought to be an interesting one. I can think of a couple of people I certainly expect will run, can think of a couple more who may run, and have heard rumors of one I found surprising. So who knows — we could have five (or even more) people running for the slot. The Post Office will be happy :-)

As for tonight’s session, it went quite a bit slower than I was expecting. We only managed to finish off the operating budgets. Not only did we not finish tonight (which I didn’t really expect), but I doubt we’ll finish Wednesday, either. There’s still the entire capital budget, the senior tax deferral, and the twistier-by-the-minute Venner Road article, for starters.

The unprecedented pace continues. In all seriousness, I wonder what’s up this year. There definitely seems to be a drive to get it over with. I’ve never seen so many motions to postpone defeated. I’d love to know what to attribute the change in attitude to. Even the Moderator made a jokingly surprised comment about the “new” Town Meeting.

By my count we disposed of another 15 articles, making a three-session total of 41. With only 65 articles in the warrant (not counting the election article or the reports article) that leaves only 24, though two of those are the operating and capital budgets. Finishing on 8 May is definitely in sight and finishing by 10 May looks very feasible.

• We disposed of another 12 articles, making a total of 26 out of 66 (not counting the election article in either number).
• I wonder what happened to Mr. Pannesi. I can’t recall someone asking for personal home rule legislation not showing up when their article came up. It’ll be interesting to see if the meeting will reconsider it if he does show up at a future session.
• Why oh why did Mr. Gilligan feel it was necessary to waste eight minutes reading verbatim from a report that we all had in front of us? When I am elected moderator, one of the first things I will do will be to institute a rule (or put in an article for a by-law amendment if necessary) limiting presenting a report to two minutes (unless the speaker gets the approval of the meeting for more time). That said, it looks like he is undertaking some worthy initiatives.
• Article 35 isn’t in the books yet. Jim O’Conor of precinct 19 discovered that (relative to last year’s revolving fund vote) this year’s vote was missing:
  • The Tuition Payments Fund
  • The All-Day Kindergarten Fund
  • The Hardy School Programs Fund
  • The Building User Fees Fund

  Mr. O’Conor has notified the Town Manager about this and he is going to have the Comptroller look into it and see what happened and if anything needs to be fixed.

• I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many motions to postpone defeated. And voting down a motion to adjourn at 22:55 — that’s a new one, too! (not counting when we’re almost done with the warrant and people want to say a bit later to save coming back another night)

In what everyone seemed to feel was some kind of opening night record, we disposed of 14 of the remaining 66 articles tonight (article 1 was the Town election). I hope the newbies don’t get the mistaken idea that this is typical :-).

Overall, things weren’t out of the ordinary, but there were a few events which caused me to raise an eyebrow because I wasn’t expecting them:

• Not only there being a objection to Mr. Loreti’s request for five extra minutes, but the subsequent vote on the extension being negative and not even close.
• Mr. Loreti’s uncalled for (IMHO) snark at Mr. Maher (the “who are you going to believe, the Middlesex DA or Town Counsel” remark).
• Ms. Fiore supporting the open space parking thing. And then when I thought her support would guarantee it passing, it lost.
• That there was virtually no debate about the Health Mutual Aid agreement. I didn’t think there needed to be much (my fears about us getting roped into another agreement that could burn us down the road that we couldn’t get out of were allayed by hearing what Ms. Connelly had to say back at the BOS hearing on the article), but I was surprised that some of the usual people who make sure to question agreements the Town enters into (and I don’t blame them, given NESWC and Minuteman) did not do so this time.
• This year we (yay!) dispensed with reading the call of the warrant and the constable’s return. So why haven’t we done that the past nine years I’ve been in TM?

It ought to be interesting next Monday when Mr. Abbott’s articles re: part-time officials come up. You could already see the tension developing tonight. I need to send the Moderator a note sometime before Monday asking him to consider reminding speakers on those articles about the financial conflict disclosure rule in the by-laws (though to be fair, it’s not like we don’t know who the part-time officials in town are).

The 2006 Annual Town Meeting of the Town of Arlington starts tomorrow, 24 April, at 20:00 in Town Hall. It will be preceded by BOS Chair Kevin Greeley’s “State of the Town” address at 19:00.

On the other hand, a reading of the Town Manager Act might indicate that the Annual Town Meeting actually started on the day of the Town Election and that what starts tomorrow is merely the part of TM that TMMs can exclusive act on. The Act talks about how the Town as a whole will determine the various elected officers and that the TMMs are the only ones who can act on all the other articles. To me, that implies that TM has already begun, as article(s) in the warrant (the election one(s)) have already been acted on.

Related to that, the Town Manager Act also says that nothing in it abridges the voters’ (state) constitutional right to have “general meetings”. So what does that mean? Is there still some way for an old-fashioned Open Town Meeting to be called? How would that happen? If anyone knows, I’d love to hear the answer.

I see I called all the winners. However, I had thought that the race for last in the BoS and SchoolComm races would be tighter.

It is also frustrating to see that the all-alcohol store vote failed by a mere 23 votes. I suspect that Dan Dunn is correct — it will be attempted again in 5-10 years and pass easily. I’ll be voting for it.

I’m surprised at how little discussion about the upcoming election (now only three days away) there has been. So I’m going to throw my SWAGs out there for people to dissect.

I may know my stuff on how TM works, but rest assured that I have zero insider knowledge about the campaigns. This is all gut feelings and guesses, so I disclaim responsibility for what happens if you rely on it :-)

Anyways…

SchoolComm:
I think Thielman will easily be the ticket-topper. He’s an incumbent, he’s the chair (which makes him even more visible), and to the extent you can ascribe any meaning to “I’m voting for Foo” letters, many of them say “I’m voting for Thielman and XXXX”. I haven’t seen any saying “I’m voting for Candelas and Sheffler”.

I think the race for the other seat will be tight, but think Sheffler will take it. She’s an incumbent and (I believe) this is the first time Candelas has run for anything in town.

Selectmen:
I think this one is going to go to the wire and no one is safe, though I think Hurd is the least at risk of the three. It’s true that the Establishment is all about Hurd and Rowe, so that’ll definitely help them. But it could hurt them, too, especially among those dissatisfied with the tax load, and Doherty’s very clear on his feelings there.

But I’m not being not paid to not name names :-), so I’ll say that Hurd will (narrowly) finish first. Inbumbency will help in this one. I think the endorsement of virtually all the town insiders will (barely) push Rowe over the top for the other seat, but I would not at all be surprised to see Doherty take it. I think turnout will be key, with higher turnout favoring Doherty.

Alcohol:
I realize these questions got on the ballot very late, but I’m still amazed at how little discussion there’s been of them, especially of the packie questions.

I think the question to expand the number of all-alchol restaurant liquor licenses will pass. I think the beer&wine store question will pass. But I think the all-alcohol store question will fail.

Fire away in the comments!

As you may know, there’s an article (number 67, I believe) in this year’s warrant to ask TM to vote to resolve that spanking children is bad.

I want to start by pointing out to anyone who read the story on this issue in today’s Globe NorthWest section, that I did not say what the article said I did. Somehow Mr. Joseph Tully’s remarks ended up with my name on them. The reporter has already apologized personally to me and says a correction will be run.

For the record, my position is almost exactly opposite to Mr. Tully’s. I do not think the article is appropriate for Town Meeting (especially a Representative Town Meeting, such as Arlington’s). As a TMM, I resent advocacy groups attempting to use TM a a prop in their PR stunts.

I’m also against the resolution on the merits. I believe the proponents are quite disingenous when they attempt to link all corporal punishment with criminal child abuse. I also believe the government already intrudes far too much in our personal lives and that encouraging further interference (even if only a “resolution”) is bad policy.

So for both of these reasons, I plan to vote against the resolution.