Special Town Meeting is upon us. The warrant and Town Meeting info is here: https://www.actonma.gov/599/Town-Meeting. Here are some comments on the articles.
Article 1: Land Acquisition – 4 Piper Lane, 6 Piper Lane, 4 Piper Lane Rear, and Right of Way over 90 School Street
This will pass overwhelmingly, and rightfully so.
However, it does remind me of the difficulty of creating affordable housing in Acton. The planned development was barely affordable (25% of units reserved for those making 80% of median income), but an attempt to save some of the land for a more modest and more affordable housing situation was turned down by the Acton Community Housing Corporation because the finances of building new small truly affordable housing units is so daunting, and the housing portion of the Community Preservation Act funding is already absorbed for a few years in getting the Main Street development completed, and keeping basic housing services going.
The new Housing Production Plan has some innovative ideas for creating more truly affordable housing: implementing these ideas will take focus, planning, and a bunch of cash to get things going. As the Board liaison to the Acton Housing Authority I am aware of how large the housing waiting list is, and how many people that already live in Acton are having a hard time financially with staying in Town. Keeping housing so expensive also keeps out most Black families, which keeps Acton from being the truly diverse and inclusive Town that most of us want it to become.
Article 2: Amend Town Charter – Title of the Chief Executive
David Martin covers this topic quite thoroughly: http://actontv.org/on-demand/post-video/september-2020-town-meeting-preview-article-2. 90 out of the 294 Towns in Massachusetts have already made the leap from Board of Selectmen to Select Board or Selectboard. I am hoping that Joan Gardner will make a statement from the floor: she was Acton’s second female Selectmen when she was first elected in 1974, and is opposed to the change. I am very much in favor of the change, but I don’t think it’s urgent. What’s more important to me is that we listen to each other carefully. This one will also pass, but I think it will be a closer vote than many expect. The weight of tradition lies heavily on Acton Town Meeting. Just wait for future Town Meetings when we start talking about how fundamentally undemocratic it is to have an Open Town Meeting without the option for remote participation in a town of more than 20,000.
Article 3: Authorize Payment in Lieu of Taxes – Solar Facilities
This one will pass easily: everyone likes solar power, or additional tax revenue, or both. It will be the first time I address Town Meeting as a member of the Board to speak in favor of an article. I appreciate that I was assigned an easy one.
Article 4: Small Business Grant Program
This article was not recommended by the Finance committee in a close vote, and passed the Board 4-1. The pro and con presentations should be quite informative. I was in favor of this program when it was Federal CARES money. I voted against using Town money at the last Board meeting. I’m looking forward to listening to the presentations and the debate to help me decide how to vote at Town Meeting. My basic concerns were two-fold: (1) It looks as if many small businesses are going to be closing permanently, and our smallish $4,000 grants are unlikely to make the difference between folding and staying open. That means that a lot of this money ends up in the hands of banks and lenders as the businesses settle their debts, and doesn’t help our local businesses. (2) Businesses accept both risk and reward: are we absorbing their risk without getting any of the profits? With large corporations dealing with the federal government on bailouts, we call this “socializing the risk and privatizing the reward.” These of course are small businesses, and the grants are relatively small, so the argument is not as strong. But it had me hesitating. I think a popular misconception of politicians is that we always have strong (hopefully principled) positions and lead others to our point of view. With this article, I’m in the muddy middle, and hoping for clarity during the meeting.
Article 5: Non-Binding Resolution – Declaring a Climate Emergency – A Better Future Starting Now
Here’s where my heart is. I’ve been working on this as a member of the steering committee of the Acton Climate Coalition, a group of 36 organizations that are cooperating on taking this to Town Meeting. I could go on for a LONG time about this one, so let me just send you to ActonClimateCoalition.org.
As a non-binding petition, its strength depends on the turnout & the percentage of the YES vote. Please come out and vote YES on this one.
6-9 The other articles
This has been my first time seeing the notes that people write to the Board about warrant articles. Based on that, I am guessing that article 8 will get pulled off the consent list, and the rest will be passed easily.
The write-up for article 8 did not answer people’s questions. Mark Hald has been busily sending the following note out to everyone that asks, and if this same explanation is said at the meeting, this one will also pass:
The Article to release the restriction at 127 Strawberry Hill Road is intended to clear this parcel’s title of a likely-unenforceable building setback restriction. In return, the Town will receive a permanent easement along the Pope Road side of this parcel to improve the sightlines at that problematic intersection.
A building setback restriction was placed on this and several other parcels in the mid-1980s when this area of land was subdivided. In 1989, the Town exempted this property from said restriction. As subsequent ownership transactions took place throughout the 1990s, it is questionable whether these documents were properly recorded with the exemption, improperly recorded the restriction or whether proper notice was given to buyers. To determine the answer would require litigation at a large expense.
The Town and the current property owner cooperatively came to an agreement that, in return for a reaffirmed vote and properly recorded release from the 1986 restriction, the Town will receive the sightline easement. It is not a unique situation that the Town dispense with unnecessary easements that unduly encumber property owners. In this situation, it is unique that the Town will gain the ability to implement long-overdue public safety improvements at the Pope Road/Strawberry Hill Road intersection.
Mark Hald, assistant Town Manager
I hope to see many of you at Town Meeting. I will note that there is both indoor and outdoor distanced seating, with masks mandatory, and that no cases of COVID-19 were traced back to the last Town Meeting held under the same conditions in late June. In the midst of a pandemic, everyone needs to assess their own tolerance for situations with other people, and I won’t judge anyone for doing what’s right for their own health. But, if your reason for not being there is that you find Town Meeting an annoying relic of colonial days that makes you squirm, or because there’s something compelling on TV, I’d urge you to set that aside for a couple of hours and come on by. This is the best system we have, for now, for the people of Acton to come together to legislate momentum toward the Town we want to become.