Town Politics

• My aunt Donna, who was running unopposed for Cemetery Commission, won with 548 votes.
• (The other unopposed candidates also won, of course.)
• For Selectmen seat #1, incumbent Rick Swensen defeated 18-year-old challenger Joe Szafarowicz 458-286.
• For Selectmen seat #2, challenger David Singer defeated incumbent Jack Bacon 412-343.
• The question to change the position of Town Clerk from an elected to an appointed position was defeated, 308-374.
• Mr. Singer, who just won a selectmen’s seat, was the Town Moderator. The Selectmen may be appointing a successor to moderate town meetings until the next election. I’m thinking I’ll be writing them a letter this weekend asking to be appointed. I’ll also be re-reading Town Meeting Time: A Handbook of Parliamentary Law.

• Last Saturday, I judged half a day at the Magic Prerelease at TJ Collectibles, and Jessi got to play. The half a day thing really worked out well for us.
• This coming Saturday is the annual town elections, although there seems to have been hardly any interest in them in town. There are just a handful of signs about town, there’s hardly any coverage in the newspapers, and it just generally feels like there’s not much interest. I predict low turnout. Hopefully, that will be good for the challengers, but I tend to doubt it.
• Coming up later in May is the Magic Regional Championships, where I’ll be head judging the Southern New England event in Connecticut. This is one of the largest tournaments (players-wise) of the year, and it’s generally an interesting event. Although, it of course won’t be as large as Grand Prix Boston coming up this August.

There’s an article in today’s Telegram about town moderators.

• Apparently, the newspaper got it wrong that Mr. Singer would attempt to appoint a successor for Town Moderator if he were elected to the Board of Selectmen. It’s still not clear to me who would. The Board of Selectmen would be a possibility, although I would think that it could be Town Meeting. However, it’s possible that the Town Meeting has delegated that authority to the Board of Selectmen via their annual vote to let them fill appointments. But Mr. Singer would need to get elected, first, anyway.
• Making the Selectmen’s race more interesting is that there’s a Bay Path senior who plans on running.
• I’ve basically gotten the custodian of Jessi’s former 457 plan to admit that they gave us an incorrect 1099-R, but that they won’t send a corrected one. I may call the IRS and try to get them involved in correcting the situation.
• I made enough money judging last year that I’m claiming it on my taxes. I hope they accept my assertion that it’s “hobby income” and not “self-employment income” and thus not subject to self-employment tax. Especially as I consider it a hobby and not employment.
• I’ll be judging this weekend at the Conflux prerelease, on Saturday at TJ Collectibles and on Sunday at Rising Phoenix Games.

The big business development that was being planned for the center of town on Rte. 20, and went through 8 months of getting Planning Board approval, is now kaput. They have no intention of moving forward with the project, didn’t file the paperwork they needed to after approval, and so the Planning Board will be revoking their permit.

Last week’s Charlton Villager (7.3MB PDF, page 3) reports that David Singer (2006 State Rep. candidate and current Charlton Town Moderator) is running against Jack Bacon for Selectman this year. If he wins, he’d resign from the Moderator post. He says that he’d appoint an Assistant Moderator to finish out his term, but that doesn’t sound correct from my understanding of Town Meeting Time and M.G.L.. However, town meetings are run by custom as much as they are by law, so it might be legit for him to do so. But I think it’d be better if there were an election or even just a Town Meeting floor vote to determine the successor. And of course, in any event, I need to decide if I want to try to run for the position.

The Charlton Board of Selectmen did in fact call another Special Town Meeting as promised, to attempt to pass the highway barn project again. I do have somewhat mixed feelings about it, as the town does need something, but the proposed project is rather expensive and would directly impact our taxes. But it may be cheaper in the long run than doing nothing and not taking good care of the millions and millions of dollars of equipment that would be stored there over the next many years. It’s certainly cheaper to do it now than it will be later when the economy recovers. I voted for it at the Oct. 28 Special Town Meeting, because their presentation convinced me. However, it was defeated 78y-52n (it needed a 2/3 majority), and so I voted against the related ballot question as it seemed too open-ended and it wasn’t clear what the consequences were if it passed. Since it did pass, and I voted for it before, it seems like I would vote for it again tonight. But I’m not sure, I guess because it’s still a lot of money.

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.

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.

“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.)

As far as I can tell, Charlton doesn’t have an organized Town Republican Committee.

However, Southbridge now has two.

(Today’s T&G, Today’s Southbridge Evening News (PDF))

So, it sounds like it’d be easy to organize a Charlton Committee if people were interested in it. However, it’s probably too late for it to do any good for this year’s elections.