Town Meeting Quorum Issue Nears Resolution

To avoid the risk of any further grief in the situation, the Rochester Board of Selectmen held off on scheduling a Special Town Meeting until special legislation is passed that would accept the Annual Town Meeting despite its lack of a quorum. Now that a resolution is foreseeable, said Town Administrator Michael McCue, selectmen are almost ready to schedule a 1Special Town Meeting some time for the end of February or early March.

McCue told selectmen on December 28 that Governor Baker signed the letter to sponsor special legislation to sanction the Annual Town Meeting on December 17 and then forwarded said letter to the House of Representatives, which passed the measure on December 21. The legislation quickly moved to the State Senate on December 24, and now the next step is a positive vote by a joint elections law committee in the coming weeks.

“The way I see it,” said McCue, “we should be able to proceed with a Special Town Meeting towards the end of February…”

There are some scheduling hurdles ahead, though, Selectman and Town Clerk Naida Parker pointed out. With a primary presidential election on March 1 and a subsequent town election slated for early May, a Special Town Meeting would have to be scheduled carefully enough to avoid a town meeting bumping into these two events that would keep the clerk’s office busy this time of year.

“There’s not enough hours in the day to deal with both,” said Parker. “We do not have the time available to us to do that now,” she later added. “You can’t do two things at the same time in a part-time office.”

Still, McCue said, a Special Town Meeting would have to be held nonetheless, and it needs to be done before the Annual Town Meeting that typically takes place around May or early June.

“We need to have a separate [Special Town Meeting] in a considerable amount of time before the Annual,” McCue stated. “We need to figure out the right time.”

McCue said he and Parker would have to coordinate, but a Special should be expected within that February/March timeframe.

Also during the meeting, Facilities Manager Andrew Daniel presented the board with a viable option for accommodating the Town Hall Annex’s growing filing needs, saying the system the Town of Acushnet uses would be perfect for Rochester.

“I had seen a really ingenious file system at the Acushnet Town Hall,” said Daniel. He described it as a mechanical “crank and move” filing system.

Saying the Town Hall Annex file capacity was bursting at the seams, Daniel proposed the $51,000 alternative that he said would not only satisfy the current filing needs, but also accommodate the future filing needs of the Town.

“I actually saw them installing them at the Whaling Museum,” said Daniel. A positive aspect of this particular filing system, Daniel said, was that the track system for the structure does not have to be permanently affixed to the floor. “So if we ever decide that we’re going to transport the annex to a different location, this system can go with us.”

Board of Selectmen Chairman Richard Nunes wondered why the Town couldn’t just move away from keeping paper hard copies of documents in favor of electronic copies that can be stored on CD-ROM discs. Parker told him that some laws actually prevent that.

“There are certain records that the State requires that you keep a paper copy,” said Parker. Also, she added, electronic file saving technology keeps on changing, giving the examples of how the floppy disk evolved into CD use, and then eventually into flash drives. “Sometimes you lose the ability to capture the older information because it’s just not available,” said Parker. “The hardware is not available.”

McCue added that a number of historical documents must be retained in their original paper form.

“You get to a point where the stuff that’s here is the stuff that’s here,” McCue said. “There will always be that paper albatross that hangs around our neck due to state law.”

Daniel said it would be “super easy” to transition existing files into the new filing system, and it would allow for room to grow in the future with the ability to add additional filing system attachments. Daniel added that he encountered a measure of excitement by annex employees over the prospect of a new filing system.

“It fixes our immediate need and will have room for our future needs,” Daniel said.

Selectmen will invite the sales representatives from a particular filing system company to speak about the benefits of the system at a later date.

In other matters, selectmen approved Police Chief Paul Magee’s request to appoint Bryan Burger as the Rochester Police department’s newest part-time officer. Burger is a Rochester resident originally from Ohio. Burger joined the Air Force in 1997 and is currently a geospatial intelligence officer at Otis Air Force Base.

The appointment is contingent upon Burger passing the Police Physical Ability Test within the next couple of weeks.

The next meeting of the Rochester Board of Selectmen is scheduled for January 4 at 6:30 pm at the Rochester Town Hall.

By Jean Perry

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