When the Select Board met Tuesday night to decide whom to appoint to the more than five dozen open seats on town committees, only three seats were contested.
Five candidates had applied for the three open seats on the Community Preservation Committee, the panel that recommends to Town Meeting each spring how to spend Harvard’s Community Preservation Act surtax and state matching funds.
The Select Board voted to appoint former Select Board member Stu Sklar; former Planning Board member Jane Biering; and incumbent CPC member and current chair Beth Williams.
The remaining two candidates were John Lee, current CPC treasurer and 12-year member of the committee, and Dee Lee.
Sklar and Biering were voted into the two seats with three-year terms. Williams was appointed to finish Didi Chadran’s remaining two-year term. Chadran resigned as CPC chair in June 2022.
The three appointments bring the CPC to its full roster of nine members.
Select Board Chair Rich Maiore thanked Dee Lee and John Lee for volunteering their services.
Two weeks ago, as reported by the Press, the Select Board interviewed the five applicants. There was some disagreement among them about how to spend the additional funds from the newly increased 3% property tax surcharge and matched state funding next year.
Sklar said in his interview that he wanted to spend all the extra money. Williams, on the other hand, said she did not think the committee had to spend all of its money and should focus on fulfilling immediate needs of the town.
Sklar and Biering both said they were open to spending the extra money on new athletic fields, though Biering added that proposed projects should be “looked at very carefully.” Williams, in a separate interview with the Press, said the committee should consider using the money to increase the stock of affordable housing available in Harvard.
All three appointees agree, however, that the committee needs to decide its priorities before assessing next year’s applications.
In other business, the Select Board reappointed 41 current members to fill open slots on 16 committees ranging from the Planning Board and Board of Health to the Elm Commission and the MBTA Advisory Board. In addition, the board appointed new applicants to fill an additional eight open positions. At the end of the evening, however, nearly two dozen slots remained unfilled, roughly one-third of the town’s available positions.
John Osborn contributed to this story.
