While they have been described as mere “housekeeping” by town officials, two of the articles on the upcoming Special Town Meeting warrant have implications that transcend the straightforward authorizations they seek.
For evidence, say those who were there, one need look no further than the Aug. 14 Board of Selectmen meeting that approved them, which lasted three hours on a late summer evening and which participants have described as “spirited,” “quite contentious,” or “appalling.”
—Lucy Wallace, selectman
The meeting was not broadcast and the minutes have not yet been released. According to those who attended, with Selectman Marie Sobalvarro absent, the four Selectmen present found it difficult to achieve a majority.
The two articles ask the town to grant the Selectmen authority to deal with the needs of two buildings on the Common: Town Hall and the old library.
Article 4, the first of the two, authorizes the Selectmen to rent “temporary space to house Town Hall offices” while the 1872 building is being renovated. The article doesn’t compel them to do so, but makes the rental of offices elsewhere in town a possibility. It’s one of those things that require Town Meeting approval, Town Administrator Tim Bragan told the Press this week.
Article 5 asks for a pair of authorizations. First, it asks the Town Meeting to allow the library trustees to transfer “the care, custody, management and control,” of the old library to the Selectmen, and then it grants them the right to lease it. According to Bragan, what’s required is for the library trustees to declare the old library as “surplus.” Only then can Selectmen proceed with other plans.
Article 5 also empowers the Selectmen to rent or lease the old library “to another party.” Though it is not named, the other party in question is the recently formed nonprofit Center on the Common. The Center would like to operate the old library as a cultural center on behalf of the town and is currently negotiating a lease for the empty building with the Selectmen.
‘Uncontroversial’
When they were interviewed separately by the Press this week, all four selectmen characterized the two articles as “uncontroversial.”
“They let us do the things we need to do,” said Bragan, “and we need to do them now.”
But if the vote to approve them was eventually unanimous, it took a while to get there.
The focus of Aug. 14’s marathon debate was the wording of Article 4, according to participants. In its original version, as drafted by Bragan and town counsel Mark Lanza, the article would have allowed Selectmen to investigate three locations for a temporary Town Hall—Devens, the old library, or a suite of offices owned by a private party elsewhere in town—and to choose the option best for the town. Such authorization is needed to lease space at either Devens or elsewhere in Harvard, but it’s not needed for a move to the old library, which is a town-owned property.
The town has estimated it needs 4,000 square feet of space for its temporary offices and has already published a request for bids, which are due by Aug. 27, two days before the Special Town Meeting, and can’t be unsealed before then. Bragan says that he knows of one bid “in preparation.”
The $4 million that Town Meeting approved for the renovation of Town Hall this spring includes an estimated $60,000 for relocating its offices during construction.
‘Convenience and efficiency’
Selectmen Chairman Lucy Wallace and Selectman Tim Clark supported the article as written. But Selectmen Bill Johnson and Ron Ricci insisted that Devens was too far to ask residents to travel and would make it difficult for employees like Finance Director Lorraine Leonard, whose expertise is shared with both the schools and town government. Ricci and he were “concerned about convenience and efficiency,” Johnson told the Press. They also wanted to ensure that the town “not pay anything more than the lowest cost,” Johnson said.
Wallace and Clark, on the other hand, wanted to keep the article as open-ended as possible.
“I was saying that I don’t know anything—we don’t know anything—right now. We’ll have a much better idea when we unseal the bids,” Wallace told the Press.
“You would think that a vote [by the Selectmen] to simply post the warrant with language that would keep all our options open would be easy,” wrote Clark in an email to the Press. More restrictive language, he noted, makes it difficult to amend an article on the floor of Town Meeting, since only amendments that further restrict an article can be offered.
But Johnson and Ricci were insistent.
“We were not going to vote [on the article] without constraints,” said Johnson, and with the absence of Sobalvarro there was no way to break the impasse.
As the evening wore on, the arguments reportedly grew more heated and at times personal, according to reports. There were moves to remove the article from the warrant and motions to adjourn the meeting.
“I was willing to stay all night if need be to finish that warrant,” wrote Clark. “Fortunately for the board, the meeting was not televised. The public would have been appalled.”
Devens off the table; Library in play
In the end, it was Clark who finally came up with language that all four members could support.
“He proposed that we take Devens off the table” as an option, said Wallace. And then he proposed one additional constraint: the Selectmen are authorized to lease property within Harvard only if it is “the lowest cost solution.”
Without Devens, the new language reduces the choices available to the town from three to two, Wallace said this week: the old library or some other private location in town. But if a move to the old library proves to be the lowest cost option, then Article 5 is moot, she observed.
“If we move to the old library,” said Wallace, the Center on the Common “ceases to exist. They have told us they want to get started right away.”
‘Tell us what you want’
Asked this week if they support Articles 4 and 5, all four Selectmen said they were behind them.
“I absolutely support both,” said Johnson, and so did Ricci when the Press contacted him. “It’s important that we have the option to lease space somewhere,” Johnson said. And, he added, he wants the negotiations with the Center on the Common to continue.
Asked why citizens should turn out to vote for the two articles, Wallace said that showing up was important to maintaining the kind of town democratic government that Harvard continues to practice. “The Town Meeting sets the direction for the town,” she said. The decision might “seem pro forma,” she said, and most people in Harvard “don’t care where Town Hall is located.”
But, Wallace said, “The bottom line is that [when you vote] you’re telling us what you want. Don’t ever abdicate your right to speak up and disagree with your town government.”
Besides, she added, “this is not the final say at all.”
