Appeal or Not to Appeal

In April of 2013 Falmouth’s Town Meeting (the community’s legislative branch of local governance) adopted a newer restrictive Bylaw stipulating future industrial wind turbines any where in Falmouth were not to be permitted.

Given this, and that the town’s existing wind project is ineligible for special permitting, should Falmouth’s Board of Selectmen (the chief executive and policy making body) appeal to the full Supreme Court asking again for further appellate review?

This is likely to be one of the limited options considered by Selectmen at the Monday’s board meeting.

The PRO & CON of this option likely rests within two arguments. Whether to carry out the intensions of Town Meeting (the revised Bylaw) and not appeal? Or to appeal and cite the board’s accountability for municipal fiscal management and environmental concern. Which argument should govern over the other?

In defense of the Selectmen’s fiscal management and environmental responsibly, it’s easy to point out that the Falmouth voters declined the funding appropriation to remove the turbines. Largely from a financial, rather than an environmental concern as advocated by The Friends of Falmouth Wind. None-the-less, This might prove a telling argument for appeal.

Yet, in defense of the new Bylaw, the Appeals Court ruled in favor of a position upholding unilateral powers of a Town’s Bylaw (old or new), despite best intentions proclaimed by Selectmen to satisfy a public purpose (fiscally or environmentally driven).

It would seem reasonable then to expect this option before Selectmen to appeal the full Supreme Court should not be acted upon… for one significant reason.

The public’s attention to fiscal and environmental matters associated with alternative energy are confined to only Falmouth’s Strategic and Local Comprehensive Plan goals and action items. Neither, in the eyes of the Court, carry the weight and protections and proclamation of Bylaw regulatory authority.

The larger question posed to Falmouth (& all Cape Cod communities), given climate change and its local economic/environmental impacts) then becomes, whether the time has come to address (legally), with local/regional sustainability and alternative energy concerns, initiatives to address the topic in a publicly acceptable way congruent with existing/ or the modified will of the people -Bylaw?.