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.
Additional thoughts on the matter after reading in depth
As a (mostly armchair) environmentalist, I should applaud a utility tax as a way to trim demand. We're making an investment in safety.
It could be Brookline's Big Dig, but it appears that the town can decide to stop it any year -- without sacrificing a great deal of sunk cost. I wonder what order the streets will be done in? Suppose the members of the Underground Wiring Committee have their streets done, will that affect their opinions? Probably not, I assume it would come to a Town Meeting Vote.
My neighbor Gary Z wrote me that he could do without his window view of a utility poll. But he also told me that "this article is incomplete without a provision for ongoing supervision of maintenance." Perhaps that's already under the jurisdiction of the utilites and public safety departments. I will check.