{"id":1621,"date":"2013-05-02T00:53:39","date_gmt":"2013-05-02T04:53:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/?p=1621"},"modified":"2013-05-09T21:22:41","modified_gmt":"2013-05-10T01:22:41","slug":"town-meeting-13-session-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/town-meeting-13-session-4\/","title":{"rendered":"Town Meeting \u00e2\u20ac\u212213, Session 4"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>I take notes during Town Meeting. They are not official in any way. As I listen to people speak, I type notes. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure that, at times, I mishear or misunderstand the speaker, but my notes represent what I hear at the time. I try to publish the notes every night after the meeting,\u00c2\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/2013\/04\/town-meeting-notes-2013\/\">as time allows<\/a>. I do go back and make a few edits as errors are pointed out to me. \u00c2\u00a0<\/em><em>I do not try to reproduce my entire notes for this online version. Sometimes I relay a quote from a specific speaker. Most of the time I only summarize the discussion. At points I give a purely personal opinion; those are clearly labeled like this:\u00c2\u00a0<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">Personal note.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Jane Howard led the meeting in the national anthem.<\/p>\n<p>Moderator John Leone announced that all precincts should have organized &#8211; elected chairs and clerks.<\/p>\n<p>We will return on Monday May 6. <span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">That will hopefully be the last night of this year&#8217;s Town Meeting!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>Announcements<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u00c2\u00a0Town Manager Adam Chapdelaine reported on the compensation study, and provided a memo.<\/li>\n<li>\u00c2\u00a0Town Manager asked everyone to take the website survey.<\/li>\n<li>\u00c2\u00a0Sean Harrington announced the Republican\u00c2\u00a0Committee\u00c2\u00a0meeting for tomorrow at 7:30 Senior Center.<\/li>\n<li>\u00c2\u00a0Jane Howard announced the Spy Pond Trails Day cleanup on the 11th from 9-1.<\/li>\n<li>\u00c2\u00a0Gordon Jamieson &#8211; Collection Day is May 11th 9-1<\/li>\n<li>\u00c2\u00a0Beth Ann Friedman: SNAC meeting 87 Medford tomorrow at 7:15pm.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Article 3<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>John Cole gave the Permantent Town Building Committee report. He updated on the town&#8217;s building projects, including the Public Safety building and Thompson School.<\/li>\n<li>School Committee Chair Judson Pierce introduced School Committee report. Superintendent Kathleen Bodie gave the full report.<\/li>\n<li>Laurence McKinney gave the report of the Uncle Sam Committee.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Article 25 &#8211; Personal Property Exemption<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Moderator John Leone stepped down for this article because he has a (small) financial interest in this matter.\u00c2\u00a0Assistant\u00c2\u00a0Moderator Jim O&#8217;Conor took over. I introduced Director of Assessments John Speidel. There were several questions. <span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">I regret that I didn&#8217;t emphasize that this article was about $3100 in total revenue.<\/span> With 252 people in Town Meeting, you could have paid us all $12.30 with the revenue we just passed up! Terminate debate from Paul Schlictman. Approved.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Article 31 &#8211; Budgets<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Board of Selectmen &#8211; Question on expense calculation.<br \/>\nIT &#8211; Question on Assessor&#8217;s software. Questions on job titles that were changed. Question on school budget for IT. There was a question about the new systems analyst postion. CTO David Good explained that we have a &#8220;hole in our skill set.&#8221; We&#8217;re not good at counseling other departments in how they can use IT to improve business processes. This position will help us do that.<br \/>\nTreasurer &#8211; He intends to fill his vacant position. There were\u00c2\u00a0questions\u00c2\u00a0on salary increases, expenses, and overtime. There was confusion on budgeted v. actual.<br \/>\nLegal &#8211; Stephen Harrington asked questions on the cost of the lawsuit against the town.<br \/>\nPlanning &#8211; Budget growth is largely from picking up declining CDBG funding.<br \/>\nZBA &#8211; Question on increase in salary.<br \/>\nDPW &#8211; Question on salt usage and equipment choices. Stuart Cleinmann praised the DPW for their response to the microburst. There was a question on the brick holes in the sidewalk in front of Town Hall. There was a question on the &#8220;snow graveyard&#8221; remediation. The new trash policy was discussed. There was a question on street cleaning. There was a question about too much salt on lawns. Several questions on trees.<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"> This debate went on for an hour &#8211; I think people forgot you can call the question.<\/span> Question on sidewalk repair. There was more discussion of trees.<br \/>\nCommunity\u00c2\u00a0Safety\u00c2\u00a0&#8211; Question on police budgeting and enforcement. There was a discussion of brush and fire risk. Paul Schlictman asked for more parking enforcement and revenue. There was a question on park patrolling.<br \/>\nInspections &#8211; Question on Symmes.<br \/>\nEducation &#8211; There was a question on Chapter 70 aid and kindergarten. There was a question on high school science MCAS scores. There was a question on user fees for athletics.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">We got real slow today &#8211; lots of questions that can be asked before the meeting were asked during the meeting. \u00c2\u00a0I hope that we can still finish on Monday.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I take notes during Town Meeting. They are not official in any way. As I listen to people speak, I type notes. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure that, at times, I mishear or misunderstand the speaker, but my notes represent what I hear at the time. I try to publish the notes every night after the meeting,\u00c2\u00a0as time [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-town-meeting-13"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1621"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1624,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1621\/revisions\/1624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dandunn.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}