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The Special Fall Town Meeting will be held on Tuesday, November 2, 2021 at 7pm at the DPW garage, 170 Dwight Road.
The Special Fall Town Meeting warrant contains 19 articles to be voted on by registered voters of the Town of Longmeadow. Articles range from financial matters, amending the Historical Commission bylaw, lingering Charter changes as a result of the Charter Review Commission work, and a question on changing a Zoning District at the corner of Williams Street and Redfern Drive. A full copy of the warrant can be found HERE, Town Hall, the Storrs Library, Mirkins Cleaners, Pride Service Station, Armata’s, Williams Street Post Office, Community House, and the Police Department.
The deadline to register to vote in the Special Fall Town Meeting is Friday, October 22, 2021. Residents can register at the Town Clerk’s Office at 20 Williams Street.
The DPW Garage was the site of the Annual Town Meeting in May 2021. The space provides ample room to spread out and allows for maximum airflow with the garage door bays open. For this Special Fall Town Meeting the garage door bays will be open so residents should be prepared for cooler temperatures and dress warmly. Masks will be required for all attending.
For questions on the warrant or meeting logistics, please contact the Select Board’s office at (413) 565-4110 or by emailing adminassistant@longmeadow.org. For questions on Town Meeting procedures please contact the Town Moderator at rtownsend@longmeadow.org.
The Longmeadow Board of Health, with the support of Big Y Pharmacies, will be holding a COVID-19 and flu vaccination before the start of the Special Fall Town Meeting. Anyone seeking a COVID-19 vaccine or booster, or a flu shot, can receive one at the DPW, 170 Dwight Road from 4pm – 7pm. Please contact the Longmeadow Board of Health at (413) 565-4140 or email health@longmeadow.org to make an appointment.
Special Fall Town Meeting Warrant
2021 Annual Town Meeting
Moderator's Declaration of Relocation
UPDATE Special Fall Town Meeting
Town of
Longmeadow, Massachusetts
20 Williams Street, Longmeadow, MA 01106
Tel. (413) 565-4110 l Fax (413) 565-4112
For Immediate Release: December 9, 2020
Longmeadow Special Town Meeting Convened and Dissolved
LONGMEADOW (Dec. 9, 2020) – At the Special Town Meeting held at 8:00AM today at the Greenwood Center Parking Lot, 13 voters voted unanimously in favor of a motion, as an emergency measure for the immediate preservation of peace, health, safety or convenience of the town, to take no action on articles 1-23, by consent. This was followed immediately by a motion to dissolve the Special Town Meeting, which also was unanimously approved. The meeting lasted one minute. The Select Board anticipates taking these articles up in the Annual 2021 Town Meeting.
Longmeadow occasionally holds special meetings in the fall; not every town has a fall town meeting; some roll those issues into the annual meeting. The Special Town Meeting was set for Oct. 27. When cases of COVID-19 began to rise in Longmeadow, the Moderator consulted with public health and safety officials, the Select Board, and Town Manager, and issued a Declaration of Recess and Continuance for 30 days (the maximum the law allows) and observed in it that as long as COVID remained an increasing threat, she did not anticipate holding any meetings when they could not be held safely. The Finance Director and Town Manager deemed nothing on the warrant was to be critical. Another Declaration was issued, indicating more were likely to come given the public health crisis.
On November 18, the Massachusetts Department of Revenue informed Longmeadow Select Board/Town Manager’s office that they would not certify our Town’s tax rate while a town meeting with financial articles was pending. The Moderator and Town Manager sought every avenue to address this situation. Ultimately, however, the only viable option open would be to convene and dissolve the Special Town Meeting.
The Massachusetts Department of Public Health strongly recommended that select boards and moderators choose to lower quorums if they must have a town meeting. Concerned that the quorum for our meetings is 50, and concerned that voters had every reasonable expectation, given the previous declarations, that the town would not be gathering people together to deliberate and vote on these issues, the Moderator worked with the Town Manager and Select Board to reach a compromise proposal to reduce the quorum for this meeting and “take no action” on all articles. The Finance Committee unanimously approved this approach. The Planning Board unanimously voted to continue their hearing on zoning articles, meaning no motions to take action on those articles would be legal.
The Moderator adds that “The legislative branch and the executive branch of our local government cooperated to solve a technical problem in a way that did not endanger citizens and preserved their rights to deliberate and vote when it is safer to do so. I am grateful that citizens understood the challenges we faced and did what was necessary to preserve public health. The trust demonstrated in the efforts today is heartening. It’s a challenging time, and I am grateful to our town for rising to this challenge. Please, continue to stay safe, and have a peaceful holiday season.”
Town residents should continue with physical distancing and mask-wearing. Officials will begin planning for the 2021 Annual Town Meeting (to be set for late spring) in January. Longmeadow voters who have questions about town meeting may contact the Moderator at rtownsend@longmeadow.org.
Full copy of press release available here.
3rd REVISED Declaration of Recess and Continuance
The Fall Special Town Meeting will be held on Tuesday, October 27, 2020. The warrant has closed and a copy is available here. There are 23 warrant articles including 2 citizen petitions.
The Fall Special Town Meeting will be held at Longmeadow High School and begins at 7PM. A mask will be required to attend and socially distanced seating will be provided. For a full listing of all rules of procedure for this meeting please click here.
Annual Town Meeting was held Tuesday, June 23, 2020 at 6:00 PM
*A consent agenda is a grouping of articles together under one motion in order to save time in a meeting. When a motion to approve several articles as a consent agenda is made and seconded, the Moderator will call out the article numbers in the proposal. Any voter who wants to consider an article separately will call out “hold,” and the Moderator will remove that article from the consent agenda. Voting will proceed for the motion to approve (or reject) all the articles in the group.
Recommendations & Presentations at Town Meeting
Finance Committee -
- The Finance Committee voted to approve all of the Articles that were previously listed as "Recommendation to be given on the floor of Town Meeting"
- The Finance Committee voted to Recommend Article 14.
- The Finance Committee voted to recommend the budget Article 13, with the explicit understanding that the budget figure would immediately be Amended on the Floor by the Select Board after its reading. Finance Committee’s recommendation on the budget Article 13 will be made after the Amendment is made.
- Finance Committee voted not to recommend Article 30, dealing with CPC funding for a study for a skate park.
"The Finance Committee does not recommend Article 30.
The Finance Committee voted against recommending this article for a number of reasons. First, this expenditure represented the first step in installing a new facility, the expense of which would far exceed the price of the study itself. Second, this would be a brand new facility which would incur a brand new maintenance obligation and ongoing maintenance expenses, rather than the repair or improvement of an existing facility. Finally, the feeling of the majority of members was that unlike the team sport facilities in town, this proposed skate park would represent a niche interest, serving a relatively small number of patrons, too small to justify the expense of installing the facility."
Budget Presentation by Town Manager
Citizen Petition
Article 36 & 37 related to bylaw changes for the installation of ground-mount solar panels on the side or front of a home. Supporting documentation
Moderator’s Task Force on Electronic Voting
Purpose:
* To investigate the feasibility, security, costs, and outcomes of electronic voting technology and processes.
Outcome:
* report available to the public
Timeline:
* The task force will be appointed by mid-March, starting work by the end of March, with a report due by the end of 2021.
Electronic voting is the use of hand-held electronic devices for the purpose of recording a vote in a large gathering. Several towns use this in their town meetings. Some use it to speed up the counts for those votes that require a hand count. Some use it to move from public to private voting.
The task force will be chaired by the Rules Committee Chair and will include the Town Clerk, one other member of the Rules Committee that has studied this issue until now, and 2 or 3 other residents.
I invite residents who are interested in serving on this task force to submit their letter of interest that includes qualifications and any possible conflicts of interest to me at rtownsend@longmeadow.org by March 13. Qualifications may include a background in software development or large group facilitation, with a curiosity about understanding both social and technological aspects of electronic voting.
Contact the Town Moderator
-
Rebecca Townsend
Town Moderator
Email: rtownsend@longmeadow.org
Thank you for reading this information. Anyone with questions about the meeting is welcome to contact Moderator Rebecca Townsend at rtownsend@longmeadow.org. Our work may be physically distant, but it’s inherently social. Our community has faced great trials before, and we shall similarly face this one with as much wisdom about what will permit safety for our democratic traditions to continue.
MODERATOR SEEKS APPLICATIONS FOR RULES COMMITTEE
Applications to volunteer for the Longmeadow Rules Committee will be accepted until July 31, 2020. The Rules Committee was established by the town Charter to advise the Moderator on issues of procedures related to Town Meeting. The committee consists of five members in staggered three-year terms. There is one vacancy for a 3-year term ending in 2023 and a vacancy for a term that ends in 2022. Longmeadow voters who have an interest in serving may complete an application, available via the town website here.