Brookline Town Meeting 2004: Discussion of the Warrant Articles
Submitted by Jon Garfunkel on November 16, 2004
Here are the 25 Warrant Articles for the Annual Town Meeting. Also, here are the Town Meeting Members, which include 240 elected members and 8 at-large.
The articles sure to generate the bulk of the discussion are #7 Underground Utilities, #11 on the cell tower (even though it recommends passing to a committee), and #21, a study to overhaul the 2-hour parking limit. I'm leaning against $7 for the cost. The Griggs Park Neighborhood Association is in favor of it. I'm willing to hear both sides.
I thought I'd list all the amendments below, even though most don't need any debate. I've added some comments to them, but I really can't do justice to most of them, as I'm cramming here. Several of them simply pass a decision onto a committee. Feel free to comment on them or add your viewpoints (that's why I wrote this software). The Town Meeting commences in about 17 hours, but it could well go on to a second evening as it usually does.
Article 18: Clarify affordable housing by-laws -- YES
Here's the current law: When building residences of six more dwellings, developers have to either said aside 15% of the units as affordable or pay into the Housing Trust.
Now, the calculation of the "new units" was misinterpreted in the past to assume that if you demolished old units, you could just claim the "net increase" in units. That's not what they meant, and we're going to clarify that to instead say the "creation of".
Phew.