Town Meeting votes to hire beach director, restrict private water use, and add Bromfield House to Historic District

Approximately 150 citizens attended Saturday afternoon’s second session of 2022 Annual Town Meeting in Cronin Auditorium, taking no action on one of the warrant’s seven articles but approving the remaining six, including three of the most controversial (see table below).

Among the articles that passed were Article 4, which authorized the town to hire a recreation and beach director; Article 6, which authorized the town to regulate the use of private wells; and Article 7, which added  Bromfield House to the Harvard Common Historic District. However, attendees voted to take no action on Article 5, which would have allowed the town to dispose of certain violations of its bylaws and regulations by issuing fines rather than filing a complaint in criminal court.

The longest debate of the afternoon concerned Article 7, a request by the Historical Commission to expand the Harvard Common Historic District to include Bromfield House, as urged by a previous Town Meeting. Advocates and opponents queued eight-deep behind the single working microphone on the floor of Cronin to make their cases. Those in favor argued that placing the house in the district would protect it from being torn down or removed by a future developer. Others argued that the decision was too important to be made by such a small number of voters. 

“If you snooze, you lose,” said Historical Commission member Pam Marston, who acknowledged the number of voters present was small. But Tim Clark, a former Select Board member, observed that the move, first proposed in the 2002 Master Plan, had been talked about for more than 20 years and he urged the article’s passage. Jared Wollaston of Elm Street asked if the article was binding. “Yes,” answered Moderator Bill Barton after a brief consultation with Town Counsel Mark Lanza. After 40 minutes of debate, the article passed easily by its required two-thirds majority.

Article 6, which empowers the town to regulate the use of water by private homeowners, also passed, but narrowly and only after a section that specified controls for in-ground irrigation systems was removed from the text. A majority seemed swayed by arguments that while a well might be privately owned, water is a shared resource and overuse by one well owner could jeopardize that of their neighbors. The vote to enact the bylaw, which required a count, was 75-65 in favor.

Article 5 also proved controversial. A favorable vote would have allowed the town to resolve violations of 28 Harvard bylaws and regulations by simply fining the offending party. Passage of the bylaw would not have precluded the town from pressing criminal charges against the most egregious violators. But after 30 minutes of debate enough questions had been raised— including the revelation that no public hearing had been held on the prospective changes—that a majority was ready to move on when Paul Green of Old Littleton Road moved to take no action. His motion passed easily.

The meeting lasted approximately two hours and adjourned at 2:13 p.m.

Watch for the Press’ more comprehensive review of the afternoon’s proceedings in next week’s Oct. 7 edition.