Landfills, Buses, Bottles and Cats: What's Your Top Issue at Town Meeting?

Hot-button issues aplenty at Concord's annual Town Meeting and at least couple of them could come up tonight.

After the early-agenda budget business comes a cluster of high-intrest articles that could impact school transportation in the immediate future.

In Article 12, which the Walden Woods Project has been pushing pretty hard on of late, Town Meeting could authorize the selectmen to sell a land-use restriction to Walden Woods along with a commitment to limit future activities at the landfill site. Following that is Article 13, which would authorize the use of monies to develop a transportation building on the former landfill site – a use that wouldn’t fly if Article 12 is approved.

Sticking with the schools, Article 15 is a petitioner’s article calling on the town’s school committees to do a little soul searching and asks voters to urge the boards to “make positive new changes in the central administration … to ensure a good faith effort towards greater transparency and fiscal responsibility.”

This article comes after rather contentious year in which the state suspended funding for a nearly $100 million school building project, transportation issues have spun like bus wheels and a statewide survey suggested unhappiness among Concord teachers.

For a full look at the warrant, click on the PDF posted above.

And then there’s Article 30, which seeks to repeal the town’s landmark bottle-banning bylaw. This will be taken up at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday night.

Further down the warrant are petitioner Lydia Lodynsky’s attempts to combat Concord’s  alleged feral cat problem: Article 59 seeks approval of a bylaw requiring registration of pet cats, and Article 60 introduces a bylaw to cut down on the freedom of free-roaming pet cats. An example of Article 60’s ideas would be the potential levying of fines against the owner of a cat that “disturbs the peace” or enter’s a neighbor’s property without permission.

Between cat controls and bottle bans are a host of zoning and land-related amendments, including one dealing with a medical marijuana treatment center and andother that would allow a land conveyance on Keyes Road could be a bellweather for the potential redevelopment of Millbrook Tarry.  

So, with that in mind, we want to know: What's your top issue before Concord's annual Town Meeting? Let us know in the comment section below.