Select Board pulls one Special Town Meeting article, confirms meeting times

When is a town meeting warrant done? Not, apparently, until it’s signed.

Tuesday night the Select Board’s four members opened the warrants for the back-to-back Sept. 27 meetings for a second time in two weeks to remove an article, and also to consider changing the start time of Special Town Meeting.

In unanimous votes, the board removed Article 6 from the Special Town Meeting warrant but decided to leave the start time of Special Town Meeting at 1 p.m—directly following the continuation of Annual Town Meeting at noon—rather than moving it earlier as had been suggested by Town Administrator Dan Nason.

Special Town Meeting Article 6 would have authorized the town to borrow money to facilitate the purchase of a conservation restriction on Three Penny Farm at 295 Old Little Road. But that authorization presumed the Conservation Commission would qualify for a state grant to support the purchase, and this week the commission learned the town’s application had been denied.

The board also considered and rejected Nason’s recommendation that the start of the Sept. 27 Special Town Meeting be moved from 1 p.m. to 12:30 p.m. The suggestion was motivated by the Planning Board’s decision to take no action on two of the three most controversial articles on the Annual Town Meeting Second Session warrant, the ones remaining from May that proposed a new Town Center Overlay District (see article on page 1).

The continued session of Annual Town Meeting, at which those articles will be considered, is set to begin at noon. But with only one article left to debate, Nason worried that once it was decided, voters would be left waiting for the special session to begin. However, the remaining article concerns the Planning Board’s proposal for a form-based code, and Select Board members were not persuaded that the debate and vote would happen quickly. Chair Kara Minar said she felt it was unfair to people who had already made plans for the 1 p.m. start of the Special Town Meeting to do a last-minute switch.

As a result of Tuesday’s actions, the back-to-back Town Meetings will proceed as scheduled. Voters will assemble in Cronin Auditorium at noon Sept. 27 to consider the three articles on the May Annual Town Meeting warrant that were left undecided, the “spring leftovers,” as Minar calls them. If the three—two of which will be passed over—are decided within the hour, then Special Town Meeting will convene at 1 p.m. to consider the five articles on that warrant. Article 4, which asks for authorization to purchase land for an athletic field on Old Mill Road, is expected to draw a crowd. That article appeared on last May’s Annual Town Meeting warrant, but it failed to achieve the two-thirds majority required for its passage.

Having confirmed a 1 p.m. start time for the second gathering, the board voted to recommend all five articles on the Special Town Meeting warrant. Once signed, both will be printed for distribution to attendees Sept. 27. Nason told the board that the leftover articles as well as the STM articles would be included in the package. Every household will receive a postcard with meeting times and instructions on how to obtain a copy of the warrant before the meeting.

The Harvard Press will publish its popular Warrant in Plain English along with a Guide to Town Meeting and deeper analysis of the most complex and controversial articles to be debated in a townwide edition of the paper next week. Every household in Harvard and the Harvard-enfranchised portions of Devens will receive a copy.