Town Meeting: October 15, 2020

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0:05 Marblehead will be holding a special town meeting on Saturday, October 17th at 9 a.m. outdoors at the start of the Spee Community Center parking lot. Chris Stevens, Senior Multimedia Journalist for the Marblehead Reporter and Wicked Local Marblehead, joined me via Zoom this week to preview the articles on the special town meeting warrant. All right, Chris, welcome. We’ve kind of already done this. Most of these articles we talked about when the warrant first came out. We had the first town meeting in June, which covered mostly the money articles so that the budget could be passed and things could be set there by the time that the fiscal year started July 1st. And these are pretty much all of the other articles that were on that warrant. All right, so let’s take a look at some of these articles here. We’re going to skip over the usual ones. There are few that the selectmen have already indicated will be asked to be definitely postponed. So let’s move up to Article 12, which brings into the raising the number of or the price of parking tickets for the snow emergency. I don’t think there’ll be an issue with this. There might be, but I think people want to see the parking band go into effect and to make that go into effect, they’re going to have to agree to this. Yeah, if you’re really charging $25, I mean, look at last winter, it snowed twice last winter. It had two plowable snows.

1:39 That’s $50 versus $600 to rent a space someplace. I paid $50 in fines myself, and I think that’s what they’re concerned about. So they want to up it. What are they going to up it to $100? Yeah, $200 for snow emergency. So now you’re talking some serious cash. I think people will take that a little bit more seriously. And it seems like they’ve come up with a plan for the to handle the overnight parking band, make it a more of an emergency based situation as opposed to a strict winter effect. And it’s interesting because both chiefs, Chief Gillian and Chief Picarello were both really, you know, sort of dead set against this, but they’re they’re on board. They did. I feel like they did a huge amount of work on this. Everybody on that committee, not the two of them. Now, Article 16 is for renovations to the library. That was going to be a dead exclusion override issue. And the library has already stated that they don’t plan on pursuing this until next year’s regular time meeting. And I’ve heard nothing different on that. Right. So we’re assuming that that’s still the case, but we’ll find out on Saturday. Yeah. That brings us to Article 18 and 19, which talks about tackling the village street, vine street, pleasant street intersection. And there’s a plan for this. Have you seen the plan? Yeah, it’s going to come forward. I have seen the design.

3:13 They’re sort of pushing. Looks like they’re going to sort of extend village street out, which kind of everybody does now anyway. This will just make it safer. They’re going to sort of define the corridors a little bit more. Right now, as everybody knows, it’s kind of a free for all in that area. And this will actually define, you know, corridors and where people should go and where drivers should go. And this does make it safer for people trying to cross Pleasant Street. It narrows Pleasant Street quite a bit so that the crosswalks aren’t as long. And it just seems like it’s worth trying anyway. But it does as part of the project, though. It does. There are a lot of, according to the list on here on Northtown warrant, there are a lot of residences who will be impacted in one way or another. And it might be very minor impacts. We’re not really sure. But, you know, it is something that needs to be done. That intersection is horrible the way it is right now. Yeah, I mean, I can’t, I feel like it can’t possibly make it worse. So. article 20 is asking for the town to set 25 miles per hour as the speed limit for town roads, except where they are posted as others, which I assume means like 114. The town really can’t say anything about that. I don’t think so. State roads, they can’t. Right. And you see those signs a lot in Salem. I think they put

4:47 they put them up everywhere. Yeah. So people think it’s 25 miles per hour everywhere. But then, you know, two feet further down the road, you see the 30 mile an hour sign or 35 mile an hour sign. I know. I’m wondering if they’ll change like Atlantic coming in from Swanscon on Atlantic. I mean, that’s a fairly busy road. And I don’t know if you’ve ever like I live in a community where they have done this. 25 miles per hour is very, very slow. And some roads need that. Yeah. Some roads are small and some roads that’s going to get in some areas. I’m just like, yeah, you’re going to I just I don’t know. Sometimes I’d like to see an overall study on how this is going to sometimes going too slow is not a good thing. And again, a lot of times it’s just to get the signs put up so that people are thinking. Yeah. 25 miles per hour. Slow it down. Right. Yeah. Which is not a bad thing, especially like, you know, there’s more of a lot of schools, a lot of areas with kids and stuff. So only a time is not a bad idea. Article 21, reducing the number of board members from the Council on Aging from nine to seven. Yeah, I don’t think that would be an issue. I think I think the problem is, is just, you know, hard to get nine people to commit to serving and to get a quorum every time. So I think, you know, I think that I don’t think there’ll be any issue with that. I’ve not heard anybody upset by that. But we have people heard people upset by the text article 25 leaf blowers. Yeah, that will be interesting. I think it’ll be really interesting

6:26 because it’ll be interesting to see who shows up. I think they’re a little more organized this time. I think they’ve got their pattern down and they’re looking, and people need to realize that they’re not looking to ban leaf blowers across the board. They’re looking for a partial ban and only on gas powered leaf blowers because those are the ones that really, you know, emissions, they’re the ones that really cause a problem with pollution noise. But also town meetings on a Saturday, on a beautiful fall morning when I would think most landscapers would be working. So it’ll be interesting to see who shows up. Circle 26, demolition by neglect. It’s a very long article, takes up three or four pages on the warrant. But it’ll be interesting to hear the presentation on this. Yeah, I’m intrigued. This one actually really intrigues me. I had asked the late great Judy Jacoby about this and she and it was in response. This is more or less in response to the house that was torn down on front street that people were very upset about to see that old and historic house. But it had been left to the point where demolition, as they said, sort of they felt it was demolition by neglect that people had left it that way or maybe they were just concerned about that it was done purposely. I don’t know who’s got that kind of money. They

7:58 can lie a house just languish for decades while it falls apart, but I guess apparently people do. But yeah, I think it, because again, you’re sort of telling people what they can and can’t do with their property. So I think this will be interesting. I don’t know if there’s any contingent that will stand up against this. I don’t really know. I haven’t heard any rumblings about it, but I do find the whole thing intriguing. There are a couple of other articles from the old and historic districts commission. One’s kind of a minor one, just moving terraces and patios from one type of structure to another type of structure. And then there’s one about air conditioning units. Yeah, structures and features not requiring certificate of appropriateness for old and the city of the town will add this. And I think this is because there was an issue with a home in the old and historic district and they were having central air put in and there was an issue about where the outdoor, I don’t know if it’s a condenser or the actual air conditioner itself, where that would go and did it look appropriate and did it not look appropriate and can we hide it somehow? And so I’m guessing that this possibly came from that issue, which is tough. I mean, you want to live in the old and historic district, but there are some modernizations that are nice. Yeah, I can understand a homeowner one. And if you can do it in a way that doesn’t

9:36 hurt the look from the outside of the building. Yeah. All right. Article 29, Sustainable Marblehead Greenhouse Gas Emissions. This one you thought was one could be a little confusing for people who might have thought we already talked about this and had this before. But you were smart and read through the entire article and realized that we have not done this before. Because yeah, my first response was, did we really do this in town meeting? And as you pointed out, it was 2018. They actually, oh, what is it? They made a commitment to using 100% carbon free energy. Yes. So it wasn’t greenhouse gas emissions. So this is sort of combined. This would work in conjunction with that. Article 30, Sustainability Coordinator. This one, the Board of Health talked about at their meeting. And while they kind of agree that a person like this would be very helpful, the question is, who’s going to pay for it and how are they going to get the money for it? Yeah. I mean, unless there’s some grant out there floating around, I don’t see they’re looking for $50,000. And you’re looking at, we just went through a crushing budget season where people actually lost their jobs. So I don’t really see this as being feasible for this year. Like I said, unless they can find a grant to fund it. And then that’s always dicey because of the grant falls through then. But yeah, I don’t really see this one flying. Like you said, I think it would be a great idea. And I think to town, if you want to make a serious effort at

11:12 lowering your greenhouse gas and going 100% carbon free, I think you probably need a coordinator. I just don’t think it’s feasible at this moment. Okay. And then there are just a few others that are again, kind of boilerplate or in there for placeholders, as we mentioned, things like the supplemental appropriation. We don’t think that we already know that the town plans to indefinitely postpone their side of that article 36 and article 35 for the schools. We haven’t heard of any talk about them going for something on through that. And I don’t think they actually will at this time. No, they sort of indicated at their last meeting that they were not going to do that. I think they see the writing on the walls as well. They’ve been working really closely with the town, which is a whole new sort of relationship for them. And I think it’s great that they’re all doing that. So no, I don’t think they’ll be going for anything. So if you’re interested in this as well, make sure you come down to town meeting. Yes, Saturday, October 17th, starting at 9am. So remember at 9am. That’s right. You’re not even going to be able to hit the farmers market earlier. You’re just going to have to go right down and get in there. I don’t know. I guess you get at the farmers market early. I think a little late, but because the first few articles, well, that’s the thing. You never know how long someone’s going to discuss an article. If you know it’s at the end of the warrant, you can’t even say, well, we have an hour or so and head down because they could be done.

12:44 No, we always think of the first, we always think of the first, like you said, dozen or so articles as sort of housekeeping ones that are there every year, assume liabilities, reports of towns and committees. Then again, you don’t know how long that report of a town or committee could go or how brief it could go. So yeah. That’s right. And we’ll all put in our orders for great weather. Yes. Thanks for joining me, Chris. Thank you for having me.