Swampscott Select Board Rejects Special Town Meeting On VFW Post

SWAMPSCOTT, MA — A split Swampscott Select Board narrowly voted down a motion on Wednesday night to hold a special town meeting after a citizens' petition with more than 200 signatures called for the reconsideration of the 2023 annual town meeting authorization of the $1.8 million town purchase of the 12-24 Pine Street property and ensuing issuance of a request for proposal for the purpose of creating veterans senior housing and a new VFW post.

The citizens' petition was presented in December calling for town meeting members to have a renewed say on the future of the property as the Select Board debated a proposal to build a senior veteran-preference housing development at the since-purchased Pine Street lots but, in the process, to force a move of the VFW post to a separate location on Burrill Street.

• Swampscott VFW Forced To Move For New Veterans Senior Housing Building

Those against those plans — including Select Board members Doug Thompson and David Grishman, who championed the project during the 2023 annual town meeting campaign — argued that the intent of the town meeting authorization was to include the VFW reconstruction on site and that deviating from that in the final project proposal went against the will and spirit of that town meeting vote.

Select Board members who voted for the project that included the relocated VFW, and ultimately voted against the special town meeting on Wednesday — Chair MaryEllen Fletcher, Katie Phelan and Danielle Leonard — determined that while the citizens' petition did require a discussion and vote at an upcoming town meeting, it did not require the special town meeting that Thompson proposed for March 24.

The petition will, therefore, be taken up as a warrant article at the annual town meeting in May.

"The biggest thing that gives me pause," Leonard said, "is that people came down here today (in public comment) and said they signed this when they weren't told what their signature meant. I have had people tell me that they signed this (petition) because they were told: 'Sign this to save the post' when in no way shape or form was this body ever intending to not have a post."

Grishman, and VFW representatives, have argued that the stated intent was always to have the post on site of the senior veterans' housing at or next to its original location — not relocated somewhere else in town.

"To me, it's clear that we should have this special town meeting as soon as possible," Grishman asserted on Wednesday night. "We are still in the due diligence period with the developer B'nai Brith. We need to give them clarity. We've also received a letter from VFW counsel that threatens litigation against the town.

"So we need to solve all of these issues. We need to bring clarity to this. We need to do this as soon as possible. I don't want to wait until our May annual town meeting. We're going to spend an entire night talking about this one article potentially. Why not do this as soon as possible?"

Fletcher said one reason not to do it as soon as possible was that a special town meeting brings an unexpected expense to the town with two people who spoke during public comment also citing that as a reason why they did not consider their signature on the petition specifically a call for a special town meeting.

Fletcher read a town legal counsel opinion on the petition that, essentially, said that since the petition did not specifically call for a special town meeting then the Select Board had discretion whether to call one or include the petition in the annual town meeting warrant.

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. X/Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)