500+ voters pack town meeting, pass $35M budget, defeat field purchase by three votes

As Town Moderator Bill Barton gavelled this year’s Annual Town Meeting to order at noon Saturday, May 3, the line of registered voters waiting to sign in stretched to the Bromfield School driveway.

The meeting drew 522 attendees, or 11% of the town’s 4,777 registered voters, according to Town Clerk Rose Miranda. Meeting registrars reportedly handed out all 500 of Harvard’s electronic voting clickers and dipped into a cache on loan from Bolton to equip everyone.

Inside Cronin Auditorium, there were few empty seats. Turnout was the highest since 2018 when 1,071 residents—nearly a quarter of the town’s 4,412 registered voters—filled the Bromfield School gym and spilled into Cronin to vote on construction of the new elementary school.

This spring’s meeting was perhaps most notable for its complete lack of unanimity. Not even the most routine measures, such as paying the previous year’s bills or accepting state highway funds, were approved unanimously. Every article was opposed by at least four voters.

Of the 44 articles in the warrant, voters approved 38, including the $35,131,266 omnibus budget and a $2,632,782 project to reconstruct and improve the Harvard Park and Track, with a down payment and future debt service paid for with money from the Community Preservation Fund.

Voters also approved a demolition delay bylaw and amended the town’s erosion control bylaw to guard against future clearcutting by developers. The latter passed only after the Planning Board accepted a friendly amendment to remove a section that would have required homeowners to consult with the tree warden when removing five or more trees with a diameter at breast height of 20 inches.

Voters narrowly rejected three articles, including the proposed $440,000 purchase of a parcel on Old Mill Road for a multipurpose athletic field. The measure fell three votes short of the two-thirds required for passage.

A proposal by Finance Director Jared Mullane to create a new pension stabilization fund to buffer expected increases in the cost of employee pensions failed by a single vote, rendering Ballot Question 2 irrelevant. And an article recommended by the Capital Planning and Investment Committee to spend $183,000 to replace seating in Cronin Auditorium also failed—by a single vote.

Use of electronic clickers proved a blessing, speeding close votes that would likely have required lengthy recounts back in the day when votes were cast by raising colored cards. The same could not be said for the sound system; several attendees complained to the Press of the difficulty of hearing the names and words of speakers.

Citizen of Note, Volunteers of the Year

Shortly after 1 p.m., Select Board Chair SusanMary Redinger paused the meeting to introduce this year’s Citizen of Note and Volunteers of the Year, a new award established by the Select Board to recognize the work of those who serve on the town’s many committees or contribute in other ways to the operation of town departments and delivery of essential services to residents.

Redinger noted that there are an estimated 170 positions to be filled on town committees each year, most of them unelected and all of them unpaid. When she asked members of the audience who had served on a town committee to stand, more than half rose from their seats applauding one another as they were applauded in turn by those who remained seated.

This year’s Citizen of Note is Ron Ostberg. The Volunteers of the Year are Peggy and Anton Chernoff. The work of all three can be found in this year’s Town of Harvard 2024 Annual Report, copies of which are available at Town Hall and online.

At a little after 2 p.m., voters turned to the first drawn-out debate of the meeting—Article 17, the proposal to purchase land on Old Mill Road for a multipurpose field at an estimated cost of $440,000. Over the next 45 minutes, at least 18 speakers came to the mic, some more than once. Those in favor cited the need for more playing fields and the years-long search for a suitable location. Those opposed objected to both the cost of the land purchase and the expense of constructing and maintaining the field that would follow.

The discussion wandered into the state of the town’s Department of Public Works, the overall value of sports for children, and whether there would be toilets at the field. When Article 17 failed by three votes, there was a burst of applause—the only applause of the afternoon for an article’s defeat.

A turning point

People had already begun drifting out of the meeting once the omnibus budget, Article 12, had passed. Following the defeat of Article 17, there was an exodus. While votes cast for Article 17 totaled 339; the vote on Article 18 was 261—a drop of 23%—and vote totals continued to decline, eventually dropping below 200 as the afternoon wore on.

The debate over Article 17 seemed to mark a turning point. The first 14 articles, including the omnibus budget, had zipped through in just over an hour. Even Article 15, with its dozen votes for capital projects, had taken only about half an hour. But now the pace slowed.

Speakers against Article 21-1, the proposed transfer of $500,000 from the Community Preservation Fund to the Conservation Commission for land acquisition, questioned the use of such a large sum to buy more open space after rejecting Article 17. “We just voted down less money than this for our kids!” said Ben Guthro.

The ensuing 25-minute debate brought more than a dozen speakers to the microphone before the transfer passed 198-83. The use of CPC money for recreation versus conservation resurfaced during the 15-minute consideration of Article 22, the use of Community Preservation Fund money for the reconstruction of the Harvard Park grounds and track.

At 4:20 p.m., following the vote on Article 33, Barton paused the meeting to propose that the order of the remaining articles be adjusted so that of the 11 that remained, those of the greatest immediate importance to the Planning Board could be decided first. The new order placed the most controversial or complex articles at the end, including the erosion control bylaw, the town center overlay bylaw, and the form-based zoning bylaw. A motion to adopt the new order passed 149-27.

The approximately 175 active voters who remained made relatively quick work of the first seven articles on Barton’s list. But the demolition delay bylaw (Article 44) inspired 25 minutes of debate, largely about how old a building should be to qualify. When a speaker questioned the idea that a house from the 1950s could be worth preserving, Historical Commission Chair George Triantaris joked that maybe “someone very historic lived there—possibly you!”

As the meeting prepared to debate the erosion bylaw (Article 34), Abby Besse, on a point of order, asked Barton how much longer he planned to continue the meeting. Barton said he estimated it would take an hour to consider and decide the remaining four articles, and he asked for a vote on whether to continue. The vote was 87-65 to continue—which drew groans from some in the audience.

Lights out

The sound of heavy rain could be heard as debate on Article 34 got underway. Just as Tree Warden JC Ferguson was ending his argument on behalf of the measure, there was a loud crash and the auditorium was plunged into darkness. Cell phone flashlights flickered throughout the darkened room. Power was restored quickly, and the bylaw debate continued for almost 50 minutes. By the time Paul Green moved the question, it was 5:57 p.m. The article, as amended, passed 122-10, but three remained. This time when Barton asked the remaining attendees whether they wished to continue, the vote was 71-33 against doing so.

Harvard’s charter requires a quorum of 50 voters for Town Meeting, and the remaining three articles—40, 42, and 43—have been described by the Planning Board as “transformational” for the future of the town. With barely 100 voters remaining, Barton accepted a motion to continue the meeting to noon Sept. 27. The vote in favor was 93-9.