Belmont Town Meeting 2013: First Week Review

If there was one lasting memory of the first week of this year's Town Meeting, it was the familiar steady voice of one of Belmont's "senior" of citizens.

Standing at the podium in the well of Belmont High School's auditorium for what appeared to be for the majority of the first week of the annual gathering of the town's legislative body, Dr. Paul Solomon – former Selectman and chairman of numerous committees and boards over the past three decades – successfully led two articles linked to him to approval by the approximately 300 member Assembly: expanding (somewhat) the powers provided to the Town Administrator and the passage with little fuss of nine projects funded by the town's Community Preservation Committee. 

"This is what true democracy is all about," said Solomon after night one was in the books. 

"You state your case and let the people vote," he said.

Solomon would admit that he and the members of the Government Structure Review Committee did not obtain the results it was seeking in the Town Administrators article – to allow the Town Administrator to appoint employees of most town departments – as amendments watered it down by exempting both the Health Department and Library from the control of the Administrator.

"But it is a move in the right direction and that's the best we can do now," said Solomon. 

If there was one person who deserved an assist from Solomon on the second night which was reserved to debate the nine Community Preservation projects, it was Town Treasurer and fellow CPC member Floyd Carman who stood with Solomon to bluntly answer the questions facing the articles. 

Another noted participant on the first night was Selectman Andy Rojas who shepherd a pair of projects that had interested him: doubling the number of restaurants that can hold liquor licenses from eight to sixteen and adding an additional retail liquor license to the three already issued.

While the restaurant license amendment sailed fairly nicely to approval, a number of residents, specifically Town Meeting member Andrea Masciari from Precinct 5, questioned the wisdom of potentially having a large liquor store and the associated misbehaviour that goes with them.

But Rojas – while it is his second Town Meeting as a Selectman, this session is his first guiding articles – directed the debate towards the currently lineup of well-respected wine and beer stores in town and how they add to the business mix in town.

The first two meetings, held Monday, April 30 and Wednesday, May 2 at Belmont High School, were also notable for what some residents would call Town Meeting's "deliberative" manner it took to question the whys and wherefores of the articles presented before them.

Others would not be incorrect to believe that this approach, with numerous amendments ("The most I've seen in many years," said Town Moderator Michael Widmer) and extended debate that veered at times off the article's purpose for being before Town Meeting, is the cause for the meetings lasting well past their proposed ending times. 

The result has been that Town Meeting has been strolling through the 32 articles with little in way of urgency to finish at least the non-budget articles in an efficient manner.

One incident stood out on the first night: Widmer, the long-time moderator known for attempting to keep a steady pace during the proceedings, suggested the body vote on an amended article after a great deal of debate on including the new language had concluded. In response, a low, guttural growl rose from the back of the hall, similar to that a ravenous dog produces when someone attempts to take a bone away.

Widmer, with a look of surprise on his face, quickly apologized for this misstep as a half-hour worth of speakers strode to the microphones. 

And while the nights had been heavy on substantive issues, the Meeting did learn that Lydia Ogilby's goat had three kids this spring.

Lydia also saw her family's farm land – granted to her ancestors by King Charles I in the 1630s – made into a historic district, one of the nice gestures in the first week of Town Meeting.