“We can’t let Wareham beat us,” said Marion Finance Committee Chairman Alan Minard after telling Town Meeting voters May 11 that, for the first time in a long time, Wareham was able to make it through its town meeting in one night. Although the Sippican School all-purpose room slowly emptied as the hours passed, those who stayed for the entire time got through both warrants around 11:30 pm.

All articles passed during the Special Town Meeting and all articles passed at the Annual Town Meeting except for Article 19, which was passed over by the Board of Selectmen, and Article 43, which was indefinitely postponed.

Article 19 would have appropriated $237,000 for a new ambulance, but selectmen favored having the new fire chief be involved in the process. Article 43 was a citizen’s petition drafted by Ted North that would have limited commercial and retail building size to ten-percent maximum lot coverage or a max of 5,000 square feet. Without the support of the Planning Board, a voter motioned to indefinitely postpone the bylaw amendment.

The night started off with a hiccup of sorts when, during the listing of the line items of Fiscal Year 2016 in Article 2, one resident called out “hold” for each and every item, visibly annoying voters and Town Moderator David Titus who at one point refused to continue reading the list if Dr. Eric Radin meant to hold all of the line items.

Radin said he was only making a point, saying the budget should be completed and available for review by residents a month before the town meeting.

“I think we should have them ahead of time,” said Radin, calling it ludicrous. “I mean this is crazy.”

Well, we don’t, Titus replied.

“We should know what some of this money … is for. And we should have the ability to do that and we don’t,” said Radin.

Voters approved the budget after a few minutes of discussion.

The first article to raise eyebrows was the Planning Board’s Article 14, which would appropriate $20,000 towards the development of the Master Plan.

Resident Joe Zora said he remembers past master plans from years ago that were devised out of “fear of people coming in,” saying this was not the case anymore.

He said the lack of public interest show that residents don’t think a master plan is important.

“Why throw money at it?” asked Zora. Zora focused on open space land acquisitions and asked when has the Master Plan ever been used to do anything?

This article brought the first mention of CVS – out of a grand total of four – by resident Kerry Saltonstall who asked if the Master Plan would at all “protect against CVS.”

“I think if ever we needed a plan, it’s now,” said resident John Santos. “Because more changes are going to come to this town.” When he addressed voters, saying, “Folks, we need a plan to look ahead and do better for the next 21^st century,” people cheered.

Following came Article 15 to appropriate $30,000 for a part-time town planner to help the Planning Board develop a new master plan. Some asked Planning Board Chairman Stephen Kokkins whether or not a town planner would even accomplish the feat. Kokkins said the town planner would monitor the progress and gather and provide feedback.

“I thought this was what the Planning Board was supposed to do,” said resident Jack Breitmeier. “To do the planning.” Kokkins said the board is busy performing routine tasks and does not have the knowledge to create a master plan on its own. Selectmen Chairman Jonathan Henry backed him up.

Even though Minard and the Finance Committee did not support the town planner position, the article did pass, although a hand count was required and the vote was 113-50.

Article 16 called for $455,000 for legal research and engineering related to the NPDES permit that could cost the town millions if forced to shut down its three wastewater lagoons, but $395,000 was the final amount requested at Town Meeting.

Article 21 was at a standstill for a period of time, with several arguing for and against the new fire pumper estimated at $540,000. The fire pumper was shot down last year during the annual, but selectmen and soon-to-retire Fire Chief Thomas Joyce made a solid case this year for replacing the current pumper, which Selectman Stephen Cushing called “a complete safety hazard.” FinCom supported the fire pumper this year, and the article easily passed by a significant margin.

The Community Preservation Commission’s Article 32 again stalled the warrant’s progression, with several residents questioning the appropriation of $500,000 toward the Marion Town House renovation project, citing fuzzy details as the reason.

Town Administrator Paul Dawson said the article was written to be all encompassing in order to be able to expend the funds based on the eventual findings of the study committee tasked with considering the best option for the future of the town house.

The discussion went on for quite a while over Article 34 to appropriate $300,000 towards the purchase of nine additional affordable housing units from the developer of the town’s new 40B development.

Opponents were the most vocal, which included Hamish Gravem of the Finance Committee. Gravem, recalling the several years of problems and protest over the affordable housing development, asked why the developer was being “so generous” by selling the 99-year affordable housing restrictions.

“So now we’ve been asked to play nice,” said Gavem.

The article passed after several others criticized the developer and the deal.

Article 37 was at a standstill for some time as voters and town officials argued over the $350,000 appropriation for the Marion Pathway.

“I’ve lived here 39 years, and I’ve been waiting for this bike path for 20 of them,” said one resident. “Please vote for this.” The voters obliged.

A full list of all the articles of the Annual and Special Town Meetings that passed is available at www.wanderer.com.

By Jean Perry

It was not a marathon night for Mattapoisett Town Meeting voters; rather, it was more like a relay race as they passed each and every warrant article (all Special Town Meeting articles and the first 34 articles of the Annual Town Meeting) on the first night.

This first of what will be at least two nights of discussion and debate was dedicated to the Fiscal Year 2016 budget set at $23 million.

That is not to say it wasn’t without its dramatic moments.

Finance Committee Chairman Pat Donoghue was invited to the microphone by Town Moderator John Eklund to outline for the voters the FY16 budget and rationales employed by the committee as they developed the budget blueprint.

Donoghue said the committee had asked all departments to stay within a 2.9 percent increase over FY15, a request made in light of local revenue, tax levies, and state funding expectations. From that starting point, depending on the department or line item in question, the Finance Committee moved up or down, she said.

Road repairs and infrastructure improvements topped the list of priorities for FinCom members, followed by the needs of the Police and Fire Departments. There were new vehicles, additional staffing, and cost of living increases that had to be taken into consideration, she told the voters. Donoghue also pointed to the FinCom members’ concerns over the historic town wharves, now in need of immediate attention, as well as the library whose Sunday openings she said were not only popular but also necessary.

But when it came to the schools, her tone took a decidedly different mood as she called working with the school budgets “very challenging.”

Donoghue said that growing student enrollment, increased costs to upgrade math and reading materials, and more students opting to attend specialized schools in the area as reasons why staying within the 2.9 percent guideline was difficult. She also pointed to the looming specter of retirement benefits like OPEB liability, calling it a “big nut.”

To date, she pointed out that ORR has been unable to set aside any money to pay for negotiated retirement plans.

Later on, as Eklund read the budget line items asking for voters to call out if they had a question on any single item before it was presented to the town for a vote, Cindy Johnson, a new ORR School Committee member, let her voice ring out with a demonstrative “HOLD” when the school budget was announced.

Johnson was invited to speak to the voters by Eklund. She wasted no time sharing her grave concerns that ORR couldn’t live up to the high standards expected of the communities it serves due to budget cuts. She also said, rather than allow the school budget to come before the voters for debate, the School Committee was forced to work with the Finance Committees and administrations for each town causing deep reductions in staffing and programs in the absence of public input.

“How do we sustain and maintain quality education?” Johnson asked the voters, while imploring the three towns for greater support in the future.

Mattapoisett’s ORR school assessment is $ 4.9 million for FY16. Local schools, Center School and Old Hammontown, came in at $6.6 million.

Everything else before the 250 or so voters moved along smoothly.

Capital needs for 13 items topped out at $422,456, with new vehicles for the Highway and Police Departments being the biggest items on the list.

The Community Preservation Fund featured grants for repairs to the Quaker Meeting House for $80,000 and repairs to the wharves at Shipyard Park for $80,000. The 1.1-mile portion of the Bike Path also received CPA funds of $15,000, as well as additional funding from Article 1 of the Special Town Meeting.

Also, $40,000 was approved to conduct an engineering and design study of the Eel Pond forced sewer main. The selectmen, with the support of the Finance Committee, hope to find a way to relocate this weak link in the town’s public sewer system from its current precarious spot – Eel Pond.

The Selectmen also requested and received funding for a grant writer to assist the town in securing funding for the massive repairs required at the town wharves.

The town moderator had already split up the warrant, spreading it over two nights, and Part I of Town Meeting concluded around 9:45 pm Monday night.

By Marilou Newell

Right to Farm Yes, Wetlands Bylaw, No

Mattapoisett Annual Town Meeting Part II

By Marilou Newell

            There was no way it was going to be a short night for town officials and voters when Town Moderator John Eklund opened the second night of the Mattapoisett Annual Town Meeting on May 12.

Voters were faced with making significant decisions on new bylaws and amendments from agriculture to wetlands protection, to opening business districts to cluster subdivisions.

Seemingly innocuous articles such as discontinuing a paper road seemed to have the voters standing to be heard. And heard they were as Town Meeting ended at late at 10:30 pm.

The “Right to Farm” bylaw passed with a strong 241 votes to 9 that opposed, yet voters felt compelled to add their voices to both sides. The ayes and the nays were debated for over an hour.

Siding with Mattapoisett declaring itself a Right-to-Farm community was Bob Spooner, chairman and founding member of the Agricultural Commission saying, “All we are asking you is to keep farming going in Mattapoisett.”

George Randall, whose family has been farming in town for many decades, said, ”Having a farm is like having a cell tower. Nobody wants one but everybody like to eat!”

Detractors felt that, by allowing more farming, neighboring property values would be negatively affected, making property less attractive to future buyers.

Others felt that smelly, noisy farms were a problem already.

Resident Roland Letentre of Holly Woods Road was especially vocal in his concerns over farming on small two-acre parcels. He said his neighbor started a poultry business that had more recently become a slaughterhouse with the animal material placed in composting piles. Though he applauded the work ethic of farmers, he felt such activities should not be allowed in residential areas.

Town Administrator Michael Gagne was allowed to respond to these concerns, saying there are processes in place to help Letendre and, with the Right to Farm bylaw, the Agricultural Commission would be asked to mediate, along with other agencies.

Gagne said, if the bylaw passed, signs would be posted at the entrances to the town alerting potential newcomers to the community that farms were a high priority.

Ray Andrews, one of the town’s assessors, said people living next to farms could lobby the town for a depreciated home value if it could be proven that the farm next door was a problem.

In the end, however, and after considerable discussion, the voters agreed with the article sponsors, and Mattapoisett is now officially a Right-to-Farm community.

The other article eliciting nearly as much emotional response on the part of the voters was the Conservation Commission’s wetlands bylaw.

Chairman Bob Rogers and the Conservation Commission were hoping to have a local wetlands bylaw put in place that would give them more local control when applicants appealed decisions, including requiring the appeal to be heard in court versus by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection as is now the process.

Rogers and ConCom member Marylou Kelliher fielded questions about the proposed bylaw, while the voters lobbed concerns that the language was too far-reaching or too vague and the costs associated with no longer being able to have the DEP mediate appeals a strain on property owners.

But no one was more forthcoming with reasons why a local wetlands bylaw should not be permitted than Douglas Schneider of Knollwood Drive.

Line by line, he tore through the proposed bylaw, calling the text confusing and saying it would make his job as a professional engineer more difficult. He said it gave the commission too much power and ultimately he made a motion to have the article indefinitely postponed. He sat down to thunderous applause.

The voters agreed with Schneider, soundly shooting down the article 140-22.

The other bylaws the voters faced were presented by Tom Tucker, chairman of the Planning Board, and explained in detail by their author, Brad Saunders of D & E, LLC.

The amendments, all for construction involving cluster subdivisions, would allow for zero-lot line housing designs, use of light industrial lands for open space calculation, and would allow cluster subdivision in the general business district.

Some voters felt they didn’t have enough information to make measured decisions about the amendments, while some were suspicious.

Bill Cantor of Prospect Street, said, “I get the feeling there is some plan behind this zoning change and we are not being told.”

Saunders assured him there wasn’t “a grand plan” and, although he represented clients with interests in or near the Bay Club, these amendments simply made good sense for the town.

And the voters agreed with Saunders. Article 36 passed 203-44, Article 37 passed 182-43 and Article 38 passed 198-24.

Other articles that passed were those to discontinue a paper road (Cecilia Road), petition to accept Northwoods and Deer Run as public roadways, and to extend the Mattapoisett Neck sewer service to lot 27 on Antassawamock Road.

Defeated was an article in support of a petition to Congress in support of bill 3127, and withdrawn were two citizen petitions to amend the general bylaws.

Town Administrator Michael Gagne met with the members of the Mattapoisett Marine Advisory Board on April 30 to ask for its assistance in spearheading two large projects.

The first is a coastal zone management plan.

“I’d like you to be the lead group to get this pulled together,” Gagne told advisory board members. He went on to tell them with whom the group will need to work over the course of the next year in order to write a plan the state will accept.

Gagne said that at the upcoming town meeting, the warrant has an article to hire a professional grant writer to secure monies needed in this effort, as well as a consultant to help craft a harbor plan that can stand up to state and legal scrutiny.

Other agencies and boards, Gagne said, with which the MAB will need to liaise are the Planning Board and SRPEDD. He told them that SRPEDD personnel have the expertise to help guide them through the process of writing a coastal zone management plan.

Gagne pointed to recent pressures placed on the scenic harbor, a harbor that would be best served by having a local enforceable harbor plan. He handed out the plan that New Bedford and Fairhaven had put in place several years ago as a guide towards beginning to outline such a plan for Mattapoisett.

“A harbor plan would allow the Town to develop their own language for Chapter 91 projects,” said Gagne, such as private docks and piers.

He also asked the board to come out in support of various waterfront-related warrant articles that will help the town make necessary repairs to the historic wharves.

And Gagne didn’t stop there.

He also asked the board to begin a review of waterside rules and regulations that, in his view, were out of date and in need to improvement.

On this project, he said the board would be working with Town Counsel John Goldrosen of Koppelman and Paige. Gagne passed out copies of the current rules and regulations that Goldrosen had edited. There was a good-natured collective groan when the members saw the amount of “red ink” they were faced with improving. Gagne provided them with a copy of legal guidelines for preparing a new document. He thanked them on behalf of the selectmen for taking on these two challenging but important projects.

Chairman Alan Gillis said they would most likely break up into subcommittee groups to tackle these projects.

Also present was Harbormaster Jill Simmons who shared that Adam Perkins, a local teen and Boy Scout, had completed his Eagle Scout project. Simmons said the kayak rakes for the Town Wharf area that he had built would be installed in the coming week.

The next meeting of the Mattapoisett Marine Advisory Board is scheduled for May 28 at 7:00 pm in the Town Hall conference room.

By Marilou Newell

The Marion Planning Board on May 4 took the final step to approve the Saltworks Marine project on Wareham Street.

With one abstention, they otherwise voted unanimously to approve a draft of the plan set forth by Engineer Douglas Schneider and Dan Crete of Saltworks.

This brings to a close the public hearing site plan review, which had been continued through several meetings. Discussions with the board began late last year.

Additionally, the board unanimously voted to approve a draft of a special permit request, which was needed due to the size of the buildings exceeding 5,000 square feet. From here, the board will submit the drafts to town counsel for review. Should town counsel find both drafts agreeable, work can begin at the land located at 291 Wareham Street in Marion, also known as Map 11, Lot 79A.

Planning Board Vice Chairman Normal Hills, acting chairman in Stephen Kokkins’ absence, sounded confident in town counsel’s eventual approval.

“I don’t anticipate a problem, (but I don’t know.) I left my Ouija board at home,” Hills said.

Prior to the approval, the floor was opened to questions from the board and the public, of which there were none.

Board member Rico Ferrari raised questions regarding future engineer needs, to which Schneider responded that they would not need assistance from a consulting engineer for the Town.

Additionally, the board voted for a recommendation on the upcoming Annual Town Meeting. The recommendation was regarding the citizen’s petition bylaw “Zoning Limitation on the Size of the Footprint of Commercial and Retail Buildings and Structures,” submitted by former Planning Board member Ted North.

The petition is aimed at discouraging “big box” businesses from setting up shop in Marion. The petition would cap commercial and retail buildings to 10 percent lot coverage and a maximum of 5,000 square feet.

The board voted unanimously to not recommend adoption of the article.

During the January 5 Planning Board meeting, Hills expressed concerns about the petition, saying that the petition was “unclear.”

The fate of the petition will be decided at the May 11 town meeting.

General housekeeping at the meeting included updates on the requests for proposal (RFPs) for engineering services for the Town. Hills said they have four responses so far and that he would allow the board time to look over them.

Other updates were for the Town’s master plan. The two contracts for services from the Southeastern Regional Planning and Economic Development District, SRPEDD, received approval at an earlier Planning Board meeting.

The next meeting of the Planning Board is scheduled for May 18 at 7:00 pm at the Marion Town House.

By Andrew Roiter

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