Above: Night 2 didn’t draw the same big crowd as Monday, but there were enough voters to reach quorum for resuming the Special Town Meeting on Tuesday. (image cropped from streamed video)
A small number of Southborough voters showed up to the second night of Special Town Meeting to take care of the unfinished business from night one.
As I previously posted, Articles 1-10 and 13 were passed on Monday. All of those were listed in the Warrant as proposed by Town boards/officials, although one was submitted by members of the Community Preservation Commission in the form of a Citizen’s Petition.
Last night, the remaining Articles proposed by Town boards were passed as written. Those were:
- Amend Town Code – Establish Board of Trustees of the Affordable Housing Trust Fund
- Amend Town Code – Eliminate Southborough Housing Opportunity Partnership Committee
- Appropriation for Economic Development Coordinator position
- Appropriation for Breakneck Hill Farm Dump Remediation
- Appropriation for new Lieutenant position for Police Department
- Amend Town Code – Annual Town Meeting date
The one Article that failed was the last Article of the night. That was #18, a Citizen’s Petition for a Recall Bylaw brought forward by resident Joe Palmer* (and at least 99 other signatories).
The Article would have had Town Meeting require the Select Board to “establish” a bylaw (modeled on Hopkinton’s) that would create rules that allow voters to recall elected officials. (You can read more about the details here.)
In the meeting, Article sponsor Joseph Palmer asked Town Counsel to confirm what had “reached his ears” about counsel’s legal opinion on the Article. Attorney Jay Talerman explained that Town Meeting can pass bylaws directly, but it can’t can’t require the Select Board to do anything.
Palmer then asked Select Board members if they would agree to do what the Article asks if the Town Meeting voted in favor of it. Instead of answering, they deferred to Talerman. He explained that the board doesn’t have the authority to establish a bylaw. That is up to voters.
(He actually said “a bylaw requires a vote at a ballot box”. But he also indicated in other comments that it can be created directly by Town Meeting, even through a Citizen’s Petition Article.)
Palmer attempted to press members to answer:
if this body voted for it, and it was within your power to do so, would you do it?
Select Board Chair Kathy Cook said they hadn’t discussed that since they were advised that the Article was deficient as written. Members’ faces and body language made clear that they weren’t interested in discussing it. Select Board Vice Chair Andrew Dennington asked to move the question.
Instead, noting that nobody else in the hall was approaching a microphone to comment, Moderator Paul Cimino said he believed it was time to vote directly on the Article.
The few voters still in the room (after 9:00 pm on the second night) opposed the Article by a large majority.
For my prior explainer on what each Article is about, click here. Stay tuned for my coverage of other highlights from the two-night meeting.
*As a member of the Capital Improvement & Planning Committee, Palmer is also a Town official. But his Article was sponsored as a voter, not in his official capacity on that committee.
TY Beth for your invaluable service to the town! This blog is my starting place for info about what is going on in town and is esp. important before (and after) Town Meeting!
I write to express dismay and confusion over how Mr. Palmer’s article (#18) was handled on Night 2 of Town Meeting. (My comments have nothing to do with the substance of the article but relate solely to the process.)
Town Counsel, the Select Board (SB) and/or the Moderator told us that Mr. Palmer’s article was inappropriate/illegal/unenforceable (I forget the exact wording but the gist was that it was fatally flawed). This was because it requested an action (creation of a bylaw by the SB ) that T/M cannot mandate. Mr. Palmer could have brought T/M a bylaw for its review & approval because we are the legislature of the town, but T/M cannot order the SB to write a law. OK.
The problem I have is that the SB and Town Counsel understood this at some point prior to T/M but if I read Mr. Palmer correctly, he was completely surprised! It appeared that no one “in the know” told him in advance that his article was DOA. This caused confusion, wasted time and some negative feelings. In my experience, this unfortunate result could have and should have been avoided.
My experience: four years on Personnel Board (2017-2021) preparing the SAP for the Warrant and presenting it at Town Meeting. There is a process to this Warrant business. Proponents submit their Warrant articles to the Town Administrator’s Office well in advance of Town Meeting. The Warrant is assembled and Town Counsel reviews it for legality/appropriateness in advance of printing. (I never witnessed he legal review, but I was told of it by previous Town Counsel.) Closer to Town Meeting, a week or two before, the Moderator convenes a “Pre Town Meeting Meeting” for all Warrant article sponsors where all articles are discussed and the flow of presentations is discussed. The complexity and length of this T/M process was confirmed by representatives of the SB and Town Counsel in response to a question I asked about the previous article, Article 17 (regarding the scheduling of Town Meeting and notice to voters of the scheduling of Town Meeting). We were told that the scheduling and preparing for Town Meeting is a lengthy process consuming some months’ time.
If, as I suspect, Mr. Palmer was not told about his article’s fatal flaw until he rose to present it, why not? In all the weeks (if not months) of Warrant and Town Meeting preparation and review, why didn’t someone pick up the phone and tell him? Maybe it would have been too late to start over but he would at least have been informed and prepared with a response. If notified in advance, a proponent could quickly and efficiently withdraw their motion to fight another day. The SB and Moderator say they want to “encourage T/M participation” but the whole episode seemed discourteous and calculated to do just the opposite.
I am running too long. Perhaps I will pen a follow up comment on the same theme regarding how the authorities handled Ms. Phaneuf’s proposed amendments to Article 11. Ms. Phaneuf rose to present several proposed amendments. I am not sure why, but rather than present them together as one modified version of the article for T/M consideration, Ms. Phaneuf proceeded serially with one proposed amendment at a time, and each proposed amendment was discussed and voted on in serial fashion. Ms. Phaneuf was quite clear that she was at the microphone with multiple amendments. Until the Chair of the SB stood and “called the question” cutting off any further debate on the Article before Ms. Phaneuf could finish presenting all of her amendments. I am still baffled as to how this was appropriate. But even if it was somehow technically legal under T/M rules, it was bad form and seemed disrespectful.
In sum, if I misread Mr. Palmer’s situation, I apologize. But cutting off Ms. Phaneuf was clear and unmistakable. I am starting to wonder if when the SB speaks of “encouraging participation in Town Meeting” maybe they just want voters to show up and vote what they propose?
I don’t have an answer about Joseph Palmer except that my impression was that he had declined not to make a presentation to the Select Board (and I presume Advisory). But that may be incorrect (or may have been a scheduling issue).
As for Ms. Phaneuf, I think the biggest issue was likely that she didn’t introduce her plan to make amendments by first commenting on her overall concerns and her intention for addressing them. She started by saying she had a number of amendments and asked if she should present them all at once or one at a time. To make it clearer what was being voted on, he answered one at a time.
Based on the comments from Town Counsel and SHOPC, the clear majority of the hall didn’t believe the amendments they had already seen were necessary and they rejected them. And between the Town initially showing a wrong amendment on the screen and a long headcount over the motion to amend an earlier motion to amend (that the clear majority of voters had already mentally chosen to reject), the hall ran out of patience.
Keep in mind that it was the first Article of the night, there were still several Articles to get through, and most people had just sat through the four hour meeting the night prior. (I spoke with one voter who was so frustrated at how slowly the meeting was moving that he left in the middle of that Article.)
Full disclosure, I was one of the hands raised in favor of moving to a vote. My thinking was that if she has real concerns about the language, it will only take 10 signatures to propose a revised bylaw at Annual Town Meeting that is in writing in advance for voters and officials to vet.
If the clickers had worked successfully, avoiding the first headcount, things might have gone differently.
Beth, thank you for posting my comment so promptly and for your thoughtful reply. With regard to Mr. Palmer, of course, if he was contacted by someone who wanted to tell him that his article was not proper and he declined to discuss it, then it’s on him and that changes my view. As for Ms. Phaneuf, I believe it was inappropriate and disrespectful to cut her off before she finished presenting her amendments – whether she was talking about the first or last article of the night, and whether or not “the writing was on the wall” that the hall was not approving of her amendments. But we can agree to disagree.
Regarding Mr. Palmer, I didn’t meant that he “was contacted by someone who wanted to tell him that his article was not proper”. I meant that the Select Board traditionally invites sponsors of Articles to make a presentation at a Select Board Meeting, and the Advisory Committee usually does as well. The comments I heard in the Advisory discussion left me with the impression that Palmer had declined — but it wasn’t specifically phrased that way, so I may have misinterpreted. But if he had presented for discussion at either meeting, I’m assuming that the legality of the phrasing would have been discussed.
And if it was his choice not to discuss the Article with them, the question becomes, is it the Town’s responsibility to reach out to a petitioner to share their legal opinion anyway? People may have differing opinions on that one.
Betsy
I need to correct some misconceptions:
First, Ms. Cook did not cut off debate. The Moderator did not cut off debate. Town Meeting voted to cut off debate. The responsibility for cutting off the debate by the necessary 2/3+1 standard lies solely with Town Meeting.
Secondly, the Moderator on other occasions limited the time at the mike of other commenters. Ms. Phaneuf, who I respect, had clearly spent a lot of time at the mike and when the 3rd amendment failed and we returned to the main motion the Moderator recognized someone who had not yet spoken as is our custom. That person was Ms. Cook you made a proper motion and town meeting acted on that motion.
Thirdly, the first time that I or other members of the Select Board or Town Counsel was made aware of these substantial changes to the article was at about 6:15 on the second night of the meeting. This resulted in a hurried review. Yes, there was a technical problem and scheduling conflict that resulted in a late cancelation meetings by the review committee but, these proposed changes could have been submitted earlier for a more considered review. I would have advocated for a meeting of the working group to review these proposed changes had that been done.
With respect to Mr. Palmers article. He has a constitutional right to bring an article to the floor and he followed the procedure for exercising that right. But, as the principle author of the article he is also responsible for vetting the legality of the article. As a general rule I think it highly inadvisable for Town Counsel directly advise the proponents of a citizens article.
It is equally inadvisable for the Select Board or Advisory to ask Mr. Palmer to come and explain why he is exercising his constitutional right. This could easily be misunderstood as bringing pressure on a proponent for exercising his or her constitutional right and I would oppose such an effort. It should be solely up to the proponent to decide if they wish to discuss their citizens article with the organs of Town Government.
The last part is an interesting take, since inviting all Article sponsors to make presentations, including Citizen Petition Articles, is something the board had traditionally done. I’m curious as to when that stopped.