MARBLEHEAD — Town Meeting approved local meals and rooms taxes in its opening night, but technological hiccups ultimately forced the meeting to pause after Article 26, leaving the back-half of the warrant for night two on Tuesday.
Night two, after more than an hour of debate and confusing stacking motions, the meeting then narrowly rejected the MBTA Communities Act and the locally proposed three-family overlay district.
NIGHT ONE: Budget clears, taxes added
A smattering of technical issues plagued the opening of Town Meeting, causing it to take more than an hour to move through procedural articles. Issues ranged from audio cutting out in the overflow chamber outside of the middle school's auditorium and video projector issues that prevented the timely display of the articles being voted on.
The issues were finally ironed out by about 8:40 p.m., nearly two hours in.
The meeting also saw the successful launch and use of an electronic clicker system for vote tracking, which showed that Town Meeting opened with more than 800 people when a vote of 704 to 97 was tallied to close out Article 6. More than an hour later, a narrow, three-vote margin was tabulated in 20 seconds with no need for further verification or manual tallying.
Dozens of Marblehead union employees lined the entrance to the auditorium at Veterans Middle School prior to the start of the meeting, calling for a restoration of prior cuts that took place to balance prior budgets.
"There's no more room to cut that budget," said Jonathan Heller, co-chairperson of the Marblehead Education Association. "They've been able to bridge between a reduced budget and level-service budget. That's what we're hoping this town will approve tonight, to get us back to level budget at first."
The unions were quiet during the meeting, however, with a brief comment from Terri Tauro, president of the Marblehead Municipal Employees Union, on an indefinitely postponed article on the police contract.
"I'd like to start with a shout-out to our town employees," she said. "Marblehead's town employees educate your children and keep them safe. We keep your power on, plow the snow, and care for your aging parents.
"For many of us, the wages we make workingfor the town are far less than what it would take to live in the town," Tauro said. "It may soon be that our wages won't cover living in this state. Massachusetts is, after all, the fourth most expensive state in this country to live."
The first articles to receive substantial debate were 24 and 25, two measures to add meals and lodging taxes, with each factoring in generating about $200,000 in revenue for the budget passed in Article 26.
Debate also focused on the reported 261 short-term rental units that exist and are presently untaxed in Marblehead, a group of property owners that one resident Monday night suggested would put the town's only two hotels at a competitive disadvantage.
Carolyn Pyburn, of Gilbert Heights Road, sought instead to lower the 6% proposed for the rooms tax down to 4%. That vote failed by a razor-thin margin of 391 to 394 — a result that arrived within 20 seconds with the new voting method.
"This is another no-brainer," said Albert Jordan, a Roosevelt Avenue resident, of the rooms tax. "There's 351 communities in Massachusetts, and most of them are doing this."
Peter Conway, an Orchard Street resident, raised another issue with the tax: That many rooms are paid for in advance.
"You can't go back to the guests who've made a contract with you," Conway said of hotels. "To be fair, that would have to be put off until at least the fall to give the businesses the chance to reach out to people."
Article 24, the meals tax, passed 515 to 294. The main vote for the rooms tax, after the failed amendment, was 469 to 345. The budget then passed 611 to 63 after a series of votes on individual departments and appropriations that reflected similar approval margins.
The meeting was adjourned following the budget, leaving articles 27 through 53 for night two, Tuesday, beginning at 7 p.m.
NIGHT TWO: To Vote, or not To Vote
The biggest vote to be taken Tuesday night centered on the creation of a multi-family overlay district responding to the MBTA Communities Act. It's a vote that Town Meeting considered four times as The Salem News passed press deadline.
By 9 p.m., stacking motions sought to delay the discussion to December, or force the vote by 9 p.m., later 9:30 p.m., or to postpone it indefinitely. All three measures failed by somewhat narrow margins.
The proposal to delay the vote to December came from Trager Road resident John DiPiano, who argued that more information was necessary before voting — most notably, court cases testing the constitutionality of the law and whether the state can enforce it.
"Marblehead stands in the crosshairs of a lawsuit if we vote today — either way, up or down," he said. "If we wait, and the constitutionality of this law is determined, either way, up or down, and the attorney general's scope of authority is determined either way, up or down, then we can vote with the information we need but haven't been provided."
Sarah Fox, chairperson of the School Committee, then used her authority as a Town Meeting member to stack another motion by moving that they vote sooner. She opposed Dec. 23 given the number of town employees that would then need to cancel holiday plans so they could work Town Meeting: police, clerks staff, Information Technology support, and more.
"Our schools are shut down as of the Friday before," Fox said. "What this really does is deny the people who are sitting here tonight and who showed up a chance to have their voice heard. So what I'd like to do is amend the secondary motion to set the date and time of Tuesday, May 7, prior to 9 p.m."
That time then passed without a vote being taken as debate continued, ending with a final speaker ending their comment at 9:12 p.m. It was then clarified that the vote was needed by 9:30 p.m., confusing the crowd as many shouted that the time had already expired.
The vote failed, 329 to 450 — ushering in the vote to vote by Dec. 23. That vote then failed 356 to 430. The motion to indefinitely postpone then lost 376 to 420, allowing debate to start just after 9:15 p.m.
Debate then closed just shy of 9:30 p.m., after which the final vote was tallied: 377 in favor, 410 opposed, signaling a defeat for the measure by 33 votes.
Town Meeting exploded with controversy 45 minutes later, when a member of Town Meeting moved to reconsider the vote. Town Moderator Jack Attridge moved forward with the vote despite intense protest, explaining over shouting that he was following the required process. With shouts of "sham" echoing in the Chamber and disgruntled residents throwing objects onto the stage — a speaking microphone in one case, and a clicker in another — the meeting voted 193 to 324 to reconsider, defeating the measure and further solidifying Town Meeting's rejection of the matter.
A sequence of citizen petitions targeting the partial-year leaf blower ban were all summarily canceled without allowing discussion when all three articles received motions to postpone indefinitely as petitioner Sabrina Velandry attempted to discuss the petitions. Each of the three were indefinitely postponed by votes of 345 to 162, 355 to 137, and 286 to 204 — pausing each one and leaving the existing rules completely intact.
'; var element = document.getElementById("sub_message"); element.appendChild(subMessage); console.log("Code Loaded!"); } else { var subMessage = document.createElement('div'); subMessage.id = 'sub-message-top'; subMessage.class = 'panel panel-default'; subMessage.style.backgroundColor = '#eee'; subMessage.style.borderRadius = '5px'; subMessage.style.padding = '10px'; subMessage.style.marginTop = '25px'; subMessage.style.marginBottom = '25px'; subMessage.innerHTML = '
Support local journalism.
Subscribe Today'; var element = document.getElementById("sub_message"); element.appendChild(subMessage); console.log("Code Loaded!"); }}
