What You Need To Know: Brookline Town Meeting Starts Tonight

BROOKLINE, MA — Tuesday night 240-some elected officials are slated to gather at Brookline High School to vote on 26 issues ranging from money for a ninth elementary school to banning recreational pot shops in town to the prospect of standing behind a nationwide movement to impeach President Donald Trump.

Acting as the Town of Brookline's legislative branch, Town Meeting Members vote on major issues on behalf of the residents in their precincts. If you've got an opinion on one of these issues, be sure to look up your Town Meeting representatives in Town Meeting and tell them what you think before they head to the meeting Tuesday night, beginning at 7 p.m.

What's on the docket? We'll include the list of topics below but first, here's a few that officials say are on the more interesting side:

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Article 9: FY 2018 appropriation, Baldwin School

The town's financial board has approved the FY2018 budget, but Town Meeting still needs to put its seal of approval on it before it can pass.

Tucked into the budget is a request for $1.5 million to continue studying the potential construction of a ninth elementary school in South Brookline. After months and even years of discussion on building a new school in town to address increasing enrollment, narrowing down the options in the past year, and mulitple public meetings on the topic, the School Committee and Selectmen voted to go with the Baldwin School site in November at the last Town Meeting. Each potential site the committees looked into sparked concerns, and the officials repeatedly told the public that no site was perfect, but selecting a space is a top priority.

Still, almost immediately following the vote, neighbors of the spot, to be situated on the site of a former elementary school surrounded by park, cried foul, citing traffic, and access to Soule Park and conservation and recreation requirements as reasons for the committees to go back to the drawing board. They even threatened to sue.

Earlier this month the Advisory Committee and Advisory Subcommittee voted to recommend deferring the appropriation until the November Town Meeting. Board of Selectmen voted to recommend appropriating the funding conditionally.

Up for a vote: Will Town Meeting vote to go ahead and fund the study of the Baldwin School site? With conditions? Or hold off til November?

Article 11: election campaign money in town

Brookline’s Bylaws currently provide for campaign finance disclosure from Selectmen campaigns. This warrant article proposes to extend that to include all town-wide offices as well as ballot question committees. It also calls to simplify the reporting process, with modest reduction in the level of detail required to be reported.

Article 13: Limit the number of tobacco sales permits
This article, put forward by former Selectwoman Nancy Daly, would put a cap on the amount of tobacco permits the town gives out, similar to what it currently does with liquor licenses. Going further than the liquor licencing it proposes to eventually phase out the distribution of such permits altogether.It would, however, allow anyone who currently has a permit to renew theirs and if they decided to sell the business, the next buyer could use the permit. If the second business owner wanted to sell, the tobacco sales permit would expire.

More than 80 towns and cities in the state have some form of a tobacco permit limit, according to the article explanation.

Article 14: Ban on recreational marijuana businesses
This would place a temporary ban on the development of recreational marijuana establishments until two things happen: the state adopts regulations regarding recreational pot and the town has had the chance to create zoning bylaws reflective of the state regulations, which the article's petitioners estimate will either come in the form of a zoning amendment at Fall Town Meeting in 2018, which would require approval from the Attorney General, or on April 15, 2019. The Town's Department of Planning and Community Development are the ones putting forward this article.

Article 18: Lower the default speed limit to 25 mph

Current state law makes a reduction in the speed limit pretty difficult. So the Transportation Board has joined with advocacy groups throughout the state to lobby in favor of proposals to amend Chapter 90, Section 17 and reduce the statutory speed limit in thickly settled residential or business districts to 25 mph. In 2016, the Governor signed a bill that would keep the statutory speed limit at 30 mph, but inserted a new provision that provides the ability to local authorities to either establish and post a speed limit of 25 miles per hour on specified roadways within thickly settled residential areas or business districts OR establish and post a speed limit of 25 miles per hour Town-wide on all thickly settled residential areas or business districts. The second option would require signage being posted at the Town boundaries.

The adoption of this local option law by Town Meeting would authorize this step, but not require it. By adopting this local option, the Transportation Board would host at least one public meeting to get public input on installing a speed limit sign of 25 mph Town wide.

Article 19: Gas Tax Resolution

The article calls upon Brookline to implement a three cent local-options gasoline tax allowable by the state, and to spend the approximately $200,000 of annual revenue exclusively on projects that improve safety or convenience for people walking, riding a bicycle, or using mass transit in Town. "Doing so would provide the funding and guidance necessary to implement a long list of sidewalk, bike lane, and mass transit projects already identified and unfunded, thereby improving transportation safety for residents of all ages and abilities," reads the explaination of the warrant article which being brought forward by Brookline High School Senior Lily Bermel.

Resolution to Support impeaching President Donald Trump
Brookline residents Lisa Kolarik and Alexandra Borns-Weil (along with the at least 200 other residents who signed a petition to help get this into the Spring Town Meeting) are asking Town Meeting to pass a resolution to support beginning the impeachment process for President Trump. The petitioners specifically cite Trump for allegedly violating the Foreign and Domestic Emoluments Clauses of the Constitution. See the full Patch story on this.

Fund the high school expansion project
Town Meeting is being asked to appropriate $1.85 million to fund the next phase of a high school expansion study.
Earlier this month the High School Building Committee and School Committee recommended building a ninth grade "academy" on the far corner of the High School Campus, taking over the 111 Cypress Street building for that.
The $135 million estimated project would also improve science facilities and create collaborative space and make other improvements to the main campus buildings, according to the article.

How to find your town meeting member contact info:

http://brooklinema.gov/1020/To...

HISTORIC QUOTE ABOUT TOWN MEETING:

"I am more and more convinced that, with reference to any public question, it is more important to know what the country thinks of it than what the city thinks. The city does not think much. On any moral question, I would rather have the opinion of Boxboro than of Boston and New York put together. When the former speaks, I feel as if somebody had spoken, as if humanity was yet, and a reasonable being had asserted its rights — as if some unprejudiced men among the country's hills had at length turned their attention to the subject, and by a few sensible words redeemed the reputation of the race. When, in some obscure country town, the farmers come together to a special town-meeting, to express their opinion on some subject which is vexing the land, that, I think, is the true Congress, and the most respectable one that is ever assembled in the United States." — Henry David Thoreau, "Slavery in Massachusetts" in reference to Town Meeting.

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Photo of Brookline High School, Spring of 2017, by Jenna Fisher/ Patch Staff