Special Town Meeting - Wrap-up

The second session of the Special Town Meeting (Feb. 8) ended much better than the Patriot's second half a few days earlier. In Belmont, the home team won.

Electric Substation

I was expecting at least some serious pushback about the article on the electric substation project. In the preceding weeks, a few people told me privately that they were definitely voting "no", and there had been anonymous online chatter bashing aspects of the project, on both merit and cost. But it passed unanimously. See . From where I sat, it looked like Moderator Mike Widmer had to work to keep jaw from dropping when there no "nay" votes. And the entire room seemed to hang for that second in disbelief until we all realized it, before applauding.

The big reason for this was the "shock and awe" by the superb preparation of the various committees. They seemed to anticipate almost every question, honestly admitted past mis-steps, researched everything, and gave a polished, multifaceted presentation. The fact that they worked with all affected parties, including having agreements lined up with current occupants and owner of the site, also helped tremendously. A similar proposal was easily defeated in 2009, although the final result this year was very much the same as that initial proposal.

The biggest uncertainty came out of news that NStar is considering offering something in the mix. According the the presenters, NStar was not forthcoming with details. It felt to me like NStart woke up and realized they were losing a captive customer.

One of the two amendments concerned giving the Board of Selectmen, who also operate as the Municipal Light Board, flexibility in making the best decision based on negotiations with electric suppliers and, frankly, their own judgement about what best overall for the Town. The passage of this was subtle, yet important. In the past I've detected some distrust in the BOS, and other parts of Town government, from many TM members. But here the tone was quite trusting and collaborative. I was glad to see it.

Town Meeting Budget Info Timeline

The other article was a non-binding resolution seeking to set the timeline for what information would be made available to Town Meeting members during budget development. Over the past couple months, the language had gotten softer, but the ideas are definitely worthwhile.

This brings up an ever-present issue of who "owns" the process and the budget. TM is the ultimate decider, though the BOS, School Committee, Warrant Committee, and Capital Budget Committee give advice, opinions, and recommendations on the budgets developed by the staff. The impression I get from longer-serving TM members thank I is that in the 1980s and 90s, TM was too docile, deferring too much to the BOS and Warrant Committee. In the past decade, TM has become more active and involved, wanting to own it's share. That's all good. Last week I wrote about knowing the "job descriptions" for various elected offices. The same applies to Town Meeting.

As a Town Meeting member, I want enough lead time to review material and chase down answers. Having served on three of the above mentioned committees (SC, WC, CBC), I know it is often difficult marshaling all the appropriate info, especially when some is outside Belmont's control (eg, state aid). I initially thought the fact that these were demoted to recommendations made things too squishy. But fellow TM member Marty Cohen spoke of this as being TM's direction to the various boards on what we want, yet leaving flexibility for when things don't progress as expected. Quite reasonable. A beneficial side effect of the key committees being done a little earlier might be that they are more free to meet with Town Meeting members to help us better understand what we'll be voting on.