I didn't know what photo to use for this article so I settled on Trouble With Tribbles. Somehow that seemed relevant.
(I think that photo shows Mary O'Connor surrounded by Tribbles. I'm sure she felt that way from time to time over the last week or so.)
The Committee met today to consider the public comments they received on Monday (complete topic here). I must say that they showed they seemed to listen, and their decisions reflected their judgment on what they heard. During the time available they discussed three of the seven questions that they reviewed in the public hearing Monday.
Question 1, regarding voter approval of acquisitions
I won't repeat the comments from Monday here.
It was clear from today's discussion that the Committee didn't have enough time, before the public hearing, to fully consider how this proposal would affect existing town bond authorizations. Specifically, Evelyn Smith's explanation of how affordable housing projects rely on multiple funding sources influenced their thought on this.
In Monday's presentation the Committee explained that they did not like how the existing language could be use by a Town Council to allow them to approve an expenditure that was outside of existing budget or bond authorizations.
Today they decided to back off of the previously proposed change and only remove the words "in part" from the existing language so that a Town Council will not gain expanded expenditure authority from a small grant. This will allow the Council to decide to use existing bond authorizations as they do today for the various recent Affordable Housing projects and the YMCA conservation easement purchase.
Quesion 2, regarding term limits on the Zoning Board
It was clear that most of the Committee were affected by the stated perception of designing this to specifically attack the Zoning Board. Discussion on this point was long and vigorous (that is a code word).
There seemed to be a split of views - of whether the Zoning Board members all have exceedingly long tenure or whether there have been recent appointments. And whether that is good, given the amount of stuff to learn, or unacceptable, because others should be given a chance to serve in that role.
In the end they voted to completely withdraw this Question from their proposals.
Question 7, regarding adding more delay between announcing a Commission opening and appointing someone
The discussion of this Question proposal centered about whether it is urgent, or not, to fill new openings in Commissions. There was agreement, driven by Maureen Areglado, that rapidly filling a School Committee opening, where the workload is very high, is essential. It was less obvious to the Committee the fastest response to fill openings is an issue for other town commissions.
There was discussion about whether more time should be given for people to hear about openings or whether more rapid and effective communication of new openings is really the solution. The CRAC also discussed whether reappointments should be treated like openings. They are currently not announced in advance like openings and new applications are not normally considered as candidates when a Commission member is up for reappointment.
In the end the Committee decided to retract the wording for an extended announcement time. They also decided to add the word reappointments here so that reappointments are treated like openings and announced in advance so that others may apply for the position.
Next meeting
These were probably the more difficult questions to discuss. The meeting was running long so discussion of the hearing input on the other questions was scheduled for the next CRAC meeting, on April 23 at 7 pm.
