Danvers Recall Proposal, Airport Changes Voted Down At Town Meeting

DANVERS, MA — Danvers town meeting members voted down proposals to add a recall proposal for elected officials and changes to how the town influences decisions at Beverly Airport but did vote to accept a new single-residence historic district at Putnam House on Summer Street, during Monday's annual town meeting.

The votes came on the same night town meeting members voted in conflict with a Finance Committee recommendation to use nearly $1 million in "free cash" to purchase new trash and recycling bins for resident use required with the new collection contract without an attempt to charge residents for the bins as a way to recoup the expense.

(Also On Patch: Danvers Town Meeting Votes $980K To Supply New Trash, Recycling Bins)

Town meeting members also voted with no debate and virtually no opposition to accept all provisions of the town general operating budget in getting the annual town meeting business finished in less than three hours on one night.

Beyond the trash bin giveaway, the most discussion of the night came on the recall proposal that town meeting member Michael Trainor put forth that would have created a means to recall those voted to one of the five townwide elected offices in what he called "extreme circumstances."

Currently, he said, the town had no recourse over elected officials accused of crimes or causing the town public harm with their rhetoric or representation.

"The world is changing a lot and one day we are going to get to the point where we are going to need to use this," Trainor said, "and you won't be able to do anything."

Trainor's proposal would have presented a three-tier recall system for recall that would include a need for 350 signatures to trigger the start of the recall process, 20 percent of registered voters on a petition within 20 days — which would be 4,377 registered Danvers voters as of the last election — to trigger the recall ballot vote and a majority of voters at that townwide vote to recall the elected official.

Trainor noted that other surrounding cities and towns had similar recall provisions, but the proposal did not receive town meeting support.

One article that did pass was the one to make the former Putnam Family property, dating back to 1715, at 42 Summer Street into a single-building historic district for preservation. The building, which was home to American Founding Father Timothy Pickering, was set to be destroyed under a previous developer before it was sold to a Danvers real estate owner who has pledged to maintain the property and supported the historic district designation.

Two other petitions that failed included those to seek taxes on the 170 acres of industrial town-owned land used by Beverly Airport and dissolve the agreement between the town and city of Beverly to forgo the approximately $6,600 in taxes in exchange for two spots on the Beverly Airport Commission.

Select Board Chair Daniel Bennett argued that a push for Danvers to gain some financial benefit and more say in airport decisions amid increasing noise and pollution complaints was already underway at the State House and this article would only muddle that process.

Another bid for the town to push for a regional airport authority to run the airport, instead of the current Beverly Airport Commission, was also voted down Monday night.

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)