783 Special Town Meeting Voters weighed in on a zoning change that would allow Costco to seek a special permit to open a store at 21 Coslin Drive. Only 12 of them opposed the change proposed under Article 1.
The meeting started about 30 minutes late to allow voters who were still arriving to check in. But the discussion for Article one only took about a half hour, and the count was in by around 8:05 pm.
Following the vote, a flood of voters left the building. By the time the final vote of the night was tallied, only 346 residents were still using their clickers.
The Select Board moved to postpone Article 2. They explained that their recommendation to change how the Golf Course revolving fund is handled will wait for the spring to allow their Golf Course Committee to first come up with a 5-10 year capital plan.
From there Articles 3 to 9 passed with flying colors. There were a few comments and questions, but things moved pretty rapidly.
Only Article 10 proved to be controversial. Most commenters said they admired the goals of the Select Board in proposing a committee to come up with recommendations to make Town Government more efficient and “democratic”, including potential changes to Town Meetings. The debate was about the proposed approach.
A motion by Desiree Aselbekian to indefinitely postpone the Article passed 211-133. The meeting adjourned shortly after 9:00 pm.
I’ll provide more detail on the discussions around Articles 1 and 10 in a future post.
