The amendment by Mr. Kramer was defeated by a voice vote. A revised motion to correct details of the motion further confused Town Meeting members, but eventually the Selectmen’s budget was approved on a voice vote.

The School Department’s budget as proposed by the Finance Committee was for an amount of $29,125,850. The chair of the School Committee, Mr. Nebenzahl moved to amend this motion by adding an additional $180,000, to be used to hire additional staff. This was an amount agreed upon by the Priorities Committee in their deliberations in late March. The Finance Committee proposed the lower amount due to concerns on the use of one-time revenue on recurring employment costs. Superintendent Jackson provided the attendees with an overall picture of the School Department budget.

            The questions and issues from the floor centered on funding special education initiatives in general, which was off topic for the actual amended increase. Regardless, after considerable discussion, the amendment to add the $180,000 passed on a voice vote.

Approximately 2 ½ hours after beginning discussion on the budgets, the final item of Article 5 was approved. Although the amount of time spent on one article was considerable, it was appropriate considering this represented the entire budget for the year.

The discussion on funding design money for the rehabilitation of the Community Center concluded the activity on the first night of Town Meeting. The Finance Committee recommended against appropriating $950,000 for the design phase, giving the rationale that there hadn’t been enough time to review the plans that had already been brought forward. The attendees of the Town Meeting did not agree, defeated the Finance Committee’s motion and moved a positive motion to borrow $440,000 to complement previously allocated funds and $400,000 of insurance money. This will allow for the project to proceed, encompassing a rehabilitation of the existing building. This project will ultimately allow for a senior center, the resumption of most services and the use of the entire second floor, which has not been fully used in recent memory. The one group that will be displaced by this plan is the Community Theater group, who expressed their opposition to the borrowing.

The second night of the Town Meeting began with the articles that proposed the annual capital borrowing for the Town. The largest borrowing was for the School Department, with a request in excess of $5 million. Overall, the borrowing requests this year were larger than any recent year. The rationale as delivered by Mr. Linehan, the Capital Outlay Chairman, was that two extraordinary school borrowings were being squeezed into the regular annual borrowing program as opposed to pursuing a debt exclusion. One notable missing request this year was the annual borrowing for streets and sidewalks. Due to the larger than normal overall requests plus the fact that approximately $1 million remained from previous borrowings for street repairs, the Department of Public Works did not pursue additional appropriations.

An interesting exchange during the discussion of a new animal control van occurred when probing by the Finance Committee on the reduced request illustrated that a used vehicle wasn’t the reason for the smaller amount. The difference was apparently the removal of a laptop from the request. It wasn’t quite clear whether this was going to be a laptop for the van itself.

In an unusual move, the Moderator, Mr. Bouton, announced that the Planning Board articles would be brought up out of order. This was initiated as the Planning Board passed Mr. Bouton a note indicating that their attendance at a potential subsequent Monday meeting wouldn’t be possible for most of their members. This maneuver was intended to allow participation by a majority of the Planning Board for their own four articles as well as four petition articles dealing with zoning by-law modification proposals.

The four zoning by-law modifications brought forward as petition articles all dealt with changes to the Conservation Subdivision Design. The proponents felt that the recently approved Hunter’s Ridge development was not appropriate and didn’t necessarily accomplish the original intent of the Conservation Subdivision Design. Although their proposed changes wouldn’t have had any effect on the Hunter’s Ridge development, their intent was to avoid similar issues for other neighborhoods. All four initiative failed, but not before interesting debate and several very close votes, one which required a recount.

The third and final night of Town Meeting convened on Monday, May 9th. A proponent for the zoning changes brought forward by petitioners but who wasn’t able to attend the prior Tuesday meeting attempted to reconsider each of the four articles. Significant time was spent rehashing issues already discussed at the prior meeting and the Town Meeting attendees didn’t feel enough new information was available to reconsider the items and the initiatives failed.

Another petitioner’s initiative was to increase the Board of Selectmen from 3 to 5 members. Most citizens spoke against increasing the Board’s membership, indicating that they were happy with the current number and did not see benefits in increasing the membership. The initiative failed on a voice vote.

The other interesting discussion occurred on the article attempting to add additional representation on the Standing Building Committee for the proponents of projects. This was brought forward by the School Committee, as they and the Superintendent felt that the additional representation would provide better insight from the proponents’ point of view. The chairman of the Standing Building Committee, Mr. Gladstone, indicated his opposition to having non-residents being given voting rights although he agreed with the concept of having additional members as long as they were residents of the Town. Since the School Committee’s intent was to place a non-resident school employee on the Standing Building Committee, agreement could not be reached and the initiative failed.