The cell tower being planned for my parents’ land was approved by the Conservation Commission last week, and was quickly approved the Planning Board on Wednesday. Now there’s a 30-day waiting period in case anyone files an appeal. (Which is unlikely, as there were no objectors at the Planning Board hearing.) Then, Verizon can get a driveway permit and building permit and put the tower up.

This is my 500th entry on LiveJournal.

Over the last 4½ years, I’ve discussed topics ranging from the controversial to the trivial. During that time, I finished school, built a house, and had a baby, among other things.

I’m still not completely sure what I’m getting out of sporadically posting on LJ, but it does seem to be useful and fun.

As I alluded to before, Verizon Wireless is planning on building a cell tower on my parents’ land. It’s far enough away and there are enough trees around that it shouldn’t really be visible from my yard, and really not visible much from anywhere except the back of my parent’s yard.

At the Conservation Commission hearing on Oct. 15, they were unhappy with the road layout (they thought it could be done in a way that required less relocation of wetlands), and they cited my dad and his neighbor (on the other side from us) with violations, for things like having dirt and brush in the woods.

So, since the Highway Barn borrowing failed at Town Meeting, I thought the Highway Barn debt exclusion was meaningless and wouldn’t pass, and then people at the polls were urging people to vote for it, and it passed, although only by 44 votes.

And thus today’s Telegram & Gazette reports they’re considering trying another Special Town Meeting.

The main thing I wonder is how long the debt exclusion is valid for. If this doesn’t pass at Town Meeting again and all is forgotten, can Charlton in 10, 50, or 100 years exclude from Prop. 2½ borrowing for a new highway facility? I tried reading through the law but didn’t see it.

On Nov. 17, Jessi and I will be playing in a Bowling “Tournament” fundraiser at Bogey Lanes for WYCM, the local Christian music radio station. The theory is that we each bowl three strings of bowling, and people sponsor us per pin how much to give as a donation to the radio station.

I expect it to be a lot of fun, although neither Jessi nor I are particularly good at bowling.

Well, out of all the positions on the ballot and all 5 questions on my ballot, with the exception of one unopposed candidate that I voted for, no race went the way I voted for it.

“Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.” — Romans 13:1 (NIV)

I voted this morning. I’ve never seen a line that long in Charlton before, but it moved quickly.

The most interesting thing I saw there was a large campaign from the Highway Dept. trying to get people to pass Question #4. I guess it must not be as irrelevant as I thought. They probably figure that if they get it to pass, they have a good shot at calling a Special Town Meeting and getting the borrowing for it to pass.

Question #4 or #5, depending on where in the district you are, is a non-binding public policy question to give a suggestion to the state representative for our district, as follows:

“Shall the state representative from this district be instructed to vote in favor of legislation distributing $450 million from the state’s ‘rainy day’ stabilization fund to the cities and towns of the Commonwealth for residential property tax relief?”

There’s a lot more involved in this question than meets the eye at first. Part of Ron Chernisky‘s campaign against Rep. Geraldo Alicea is that Alicea voted against some amendments that would have taken money from the “rainy day” stabilization fund and distributed it to towns as unrestricted local aid. In fact, part of Chernisky’s campaign staff worked at getting this question on the ballot in this district. (It’s on the ballot in a few other districts as well, unrelated to the Chernisky campaign as far as I can tell.)

“4. Shall the Town of Charlton be allowed to exempt from the provisions of proposition two and one-half, so-called, the amounts required to pay for the bond issued in order to design, construct, and equip a new highway operations facility?”

As a little background for those unfamiliar with Prop. 2½, it was a measure passed by ballot initiative in 1980. Each municipality in Massachusetts has a “levy limit”, which is the maximum that they can levy in property taxes each year. This limit gets increased each year by 2½% plus an adjustment for any new growth in the town. However, a town can pass a ballot question to increase their levy limit permanently (a “Prop 2½ Override”) or temporarily to pay for something (a “Prop 2½ Debt Exclusion” or “Prop 2½ Capital Outlay Exclusion”). (Although often colloquially the temporary form will be called an “override” as well.)

Question #3 would prohibit dog races on which betting or wagering occurs.

This seems like a question that targets people’s emotions. “Oh, think of the pretty dogs and how they’re abused.” While I’m sure that some abuses occur, I would tend to think (not really knowing anything of the industry) that if you own a champion racing dog, you’d try to take good care of it so that it would win you races for as long as posible.