Town meeting followup
This old media article covers last night’s town meeting.
Turnout was pretty good(222) and retention even better – it was short, quick meeting.
The meeting opened with former moderator Jim Thomas taking current moderator Wayne Perkins to the moderator’s woodshed for a whippin’ with his hickory switch. Thomas thought the first meeting was not properly opened and closed and so could not legally be continued. Town counsel disagreed citing past conventions and various folderol.
I thought FinCom member Glenn Macpherson made some very good points about our failure to follow DOR advice by continuing to spend one-time revenues and raiding the stabilization fund. The points were covered in my last blog post. I agreed with him and was one of a small number of people wo voted against article three – the big daddy article to balance this year’s budget – which is required to send the tax bills out.
I was very pleased to see Article 14 pass overwhelmingly. This open space purchase was also covered in last blog post. Town planner Rugh Geoffroy and Conservation Agent Trisha Cassidy both made compelling arguments in support of the article. About the only issue people had was a concern that the purchase would be done with water department money – a concern that was allayed after discussion.
As much as I usually criticize the town, Article 14 had multiple town departments and boards(including the BOS) firing on all cyclinders to do a great thing for Middleboro with minimal cost.
I have always beleived that Middleboro residents rise to the occaision. Article 14 is just one more in a very long list.
And I maintain that they could rise to the occasion more often and with matching state money with programs like CPA.
Had we been in CPA since inception, that $100K we spent last night would have been just over $50K
Boys, take it outside please.