Pickleball, Election Changes Highlight Swampscott Special Town Meeting Monday Night

SWAMPSCOTT, MA — The second Swampscott special town meeting in four months on Monday night will include warrant articles on expanding the voting age in town elections, changing election dates, implementing a new specialized green energy code, a home-rule petition stripping golf courses of tax-exempt status and — for the second time — accepting a grant for state matching funds to build pickleball courts at Phillips Park.

The Select Board opted not to weigh in on the last of the articles with a recommendation when its Wednesday night meeting stretched into the three-hour mark and instead will take them up in a meeting at 6 p.m. on Monday just prior to the special town meeting set to begin at 7 p.m.

Of all the issues, the pickleball debate has been among the most spirited with residents raising concerns about parking around the courts near the beach, noise pollution from them, and that they would be built on a flood plain. The PARC grant would fund about half of the $100,000 needed for the courts with the town meeting vote only to authorize acceptance of the grant, and a full design and approval process still to follow.

Residents who spoke in public comment during Wednesday night's meeting expressed frustration that the article that failed to get the two-thirds margin needed to pass for the town to bond its portion of the courts at December's meeting was back on the warrant this time using "free cash" — or the town surplus fund — which only requires a simple majority.

The voting changes would move the annual town election to after the annual town meeting — which is the case in the vast majority of area towns, and put the election on consecutive weekends in June to encourage more participation.

Also up for vote will be to allow 16- and 17-year-old town residents to vote in local elections. Because state law states the voting age is 18 for all elections that vote would be more of an endorsement of the younger voting amid a push to change the law to allow more local control over the voting age.

Others include a proposal to strip Tedesco Country Club of its tax-exempt status for the land that lies within Swampscott, the energy code adoption and an increase in the local rooms tax that would become more of a budget factor when the proposed redevelopment of the Hadley School into a boutique is completed.

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