Looking Ahead to Annual Town Meeting ~ Issues Under Consideration

Town Moderator Catherine Cordes anticipates that she will be in a position to schedule the abbreviated 2020 annual town meeting following Wednesday afternoon’s meeting of the Select Board.

And all signs still point to Saturday, June 27, on the synthetic turf at Bedford High School’s Armand Sabourin Field.

“The final decision will be collaborative,” said Cordes, who has the statutory authority to reschedule a postponed town meeting. “I think probably our number one choice would be Sabourin.” Select Board Chair Ed Pierce agreed that “the Saturday town meeting looks like a good option.”

However, Cordes cautioned that “throughout this entire process, things change almost every day. It’s unpredictable. We can do the most creative planning and it still may not be right. We have to be flexible enough to consider changes at the last minute.”

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At its meeting on May 13, there was Select Board consensus to hold Annual Town Meeting on the turf Saturday, June 27. The Board of Health met last week and found the plan to be safe after discussing operational details. Click this link to read about the Board of Health’s meeting.

Annual Town Meeting was originally scheduled for March 23 and has been postponed twice by the Select Board to the legal maximum 30-day limit. If town meeting doesn’t take place before the end of the fiscal year on June 30, municipal finances will be subject to a monthly extension limited to meeting financial obligations, with state approval.

Any rescheduled town meeting would be a stripped-down version of the original spring warrant. Pierce said the essentials include the operating and capital budgets, the community preservation budget (which authorizes certain debt payments), the ambulance enterprise fund, and some pro forma financial articles.

“I think Bedford is ahead of the curve,” the moderator commented. “There has been an employee-level conversation going on between the town manager and the head of the DPW, the town clerk, and the health director. About two weeks ago she put together a committee that included me and the two assistant town managers, the health director, the Select Board chair, and the Finance Committee chair because we all have our own parts in this. They have been talking about the specifics – check-in, location, facilities, details that have all been discussed.”

The possibility of holding Annual Town Meeting in a building is all but discarded. “It is pretty clear from all the evidence we’ve seen that unless you have a conference center with sophisticated air exchange and filters, you don’t want to be inside.”

Beyond that, “I don’t think anything has been definitely ruled out. I’ve heard a lot of creative stuff. Some people suggested having it in a field, where uneven surfaces can cause a problem for the disabled. Some towns are considering allowing handicapped parking in an adjacent lot.”

“The logistics are extremely important so people will come and feel safe,” Pierce commented. “The demographics of the town meeting voter tends to be older. We have to make sure the whole process is legitimate, and that we take into account any weather elements.” That means avoiding the heat of the day, if possible, mosquitoes in the evening, and scheduling a rain date.

“We are still talking about the details, like what kind of platform I’m going to be on,” Cordes said. “There are all kinds of great ideas.”

Cordes helped drive a subcommittee of seven members of the Massachusetts Moderators Association that within a few days produced an exhaustive 31-page document providing guidance on virtually every aspect of scheduling open town meeting during an emergency. “This was the hardest-working committee I have ever served on,” Cordes said.

The project started about a month ago, Cordes said. “In the spring we have a regular regional moderators’ get-together, and this year we did it on Zoom. The pandemic was on everybody’s mind. We knew everybody was in the process of making these decisions.”

The report, which has been circulated to all moderators, covers everything from check-in procedures, social distancing, and masks to seating, lighting, sound, publicity, and access. There are aerial photos of Sabourin Field with a safe-seating layout superimposed.

What happens if it is decided to postpone Annual Town Meeting by several weeks, well into the new fiscal year?

Town Manager Sarah Stanton explained that town government, including the schools, assemble a list of expenses needed to sustain operations one month at a time and submits them for approval to the state Department of Revenue. The state would act on what amounts to a deficit because Annual Town Meeting has not approved any expenses, although in reality the town has the money from tax revenues.

The requirement is not a proportional breakdown. The funds needed depend on the commitments and contracts for each month, “For July our town has some serious obligations,” Stanton said, such as retirement contributions, utility bills, health insurance, and debt service.

The town manager emphasizes that the process “doesn’t allow for expansion or the addition of new positions. It’s strictly for the items you need. And you have to be able to justify it.”

Some of the expenses sacrificed would be capital projects such as road resurfacing, a common summer activity, Stanton said. “There are also impacts felt by our vendors,” she added. Also out of reach would be new hires, such as a network engineer. (Additional firefighters aren’t scheduled to be hired until midway through the fiscal year according to the proposed budget.)

“If we have to have Annual Town Meeting in July or August or September, I think we can do it safely,” Stanton said. Other towns she has contacted are facing similar challenges. “For our form of government, there is never going to be a ‘good’ time,” she observed. “There are always is going to be some people who are not comfortable. That’s a personal decision.”

“There’s always an extra cost to doing this,” Pierce said about the outdoor town meeting proposal, such as audiovisual equipment and personnel to help ensure safe passage to and from seating. Stanton pointed out that there are also costs inherent in delaying into the new fiscal year, particularly the workload in the Finance Department.

The Select Board chair emphasized that the sooner the town can pass a budget the better because the future is unknown. “If we just go month by month, we might find ourselves in the same boat next March,” he said. “But if we pass a budget, we technically may not need another town meeting until March.”

Although the warrant articles may appear perfunctory – the budget article generally passes with little discussions – officials are not taking anything for granted about attendance or time.

“There is no way I will ever predict what is going to happen at town meeting,” the moderator said. “So much depends on the people who come. It is a joy to come to town meeting in Bedford because people are civil, reasonable, and a model of democracy. And it thrills me to no end to be a part of that.”

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