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Special Town Meeting In Depth: Long discussion of Article 4 leads to three amendments

The roughly 200 attendees who turned out for a Special Town Meeting Wednesday night were quick to approve four of the five articles on their agenda, asking few questions and raising their yellow cards to pass them by solid majorities.
Not so with Article 4. In the course of a 45-minute discussion, the motion to approve its passage was amended three times. When it finally passed by the required two-thirds vote, the Board of Selectmen, who had carefully crafted its language in a contentious three-hour session two weeks ago, were left with more options than they had requested.
As written, the article asked Town Meeting to authorize Selectmen to lease temporary space “within the Town of Harvard” to house Town Hall “offices and related space” while that building is being renovated. But the article limited the board’s ability to act by requiring that the temporary offices be located within Harvard—not including Harvard land in Devens—and only if the option was the “lowest cost solution.”
Bubbling below this language is an ongoing debate about whether to use the old town library on Fairbank Street for temporary offices or to lease the building to the newly incorporated non-profit Center on the Common for use as a cultural center.
The article was added to the Town Meeting warrant by a unanimous vote of Selectmen on Aug. 14 and later recommended by the Finance Committee.
‘There are often tradeoffs’
But on Wednesday, once Selectmen Chair Lucy Wallace had finished reading the motion to pass the article, it became clear that many of the attendees seated in Cronin Auditorium were unhappy with its wording.
First to speak was Billy Salter of Elm Street, who offered the first of several amendments. “I hope it’s seen as friendly, but if not, so be it,” he said to chuckles from the crowd.
“This is a town, not a business,” he said. “For towns as well as businesses, we prefer, all else being equal, lower costs. That’s an easy one. The problem is that…in life there are often tradeoffs. Some cost more, but maybe [they’re] better. Maybe [they’re] not. But that is fundamental to our great American, non-socialist, capitalist, innovative, entrepreneurial system of government. And…strictly common sense.”
“Constraining the Selectmen to take the lowest cost lease,” Salter continued, “is removing from them some of the decision-making and responsibility that we have elected them to embody and is also depriving the town of evaluating alternatives on criteria other than strictly cost.”
With that, Salter proposed dropping the phrase “lowest cost solution” from the article and replacing it with the phrase “the best tradeoff of costs and benefits, including both financial and non-financial costs and benefits.”
The motion was seconded and Moderator Bob Eubanks asked the Selectmen to confer.
When they did, Wallace told the Press later this week, neither selectmen Ron Ricci nor Bill Johnson were willing to accept the amendment. “We decided,” she said, “that we would only accept a friendly amendment when we were unanimous.” Without the necessary unanimity, the Selectmen asked Town Meeting to decide.
In the ensuing discussion, a succession of speakers took turns before the one working microphone in the hall to either voice support for the amendment or, in many cases, to clarify and test the limits of the original article.
Marc Sevigny of South Shaker Road wondered what would happen if two bids were received, one that offered a “fantastic location” but at a cost that was one dollar more than a second, “not so optimal location.” Would the article as written compel the Selectmen to go with the cheaper solution?
Yes, answered Wallace. As written, the motion would require the Board to accept the lowest cost option. But, she added, the Selectmen were not necessarily in agreement on the meaning of “lowest cost.” “Speaking for myself,” she told Town Meeting, “this amendment could help get us there.”
‘Makes no sense’
Keith Turner of Littleton County Road speculated that if the lowest bid were for a property with “mold, and poor insulation and lousy lighting,” the town might wind up spending more to make it habitable, improve lighting and pay for heating and cooling. The original article “makes no sense,” he said. “It completely restricts the ability of the Board of Selectmen to do their job.”
“No one is talking about our town employees, “ added Jim Breslauer of Poor Farm Road, who also spoke in favor of the amendment. “Their work environment needs to be taken into consideration. I think this amendment will do that where strictly lowest cost will not.”
Cindy Russo of Oak Hill Road wanted to know if the article meant the town had to go with a town-owned building if that was the lowest cost option. If the old library were the least expensive alternative, she asked, would Selectmen “still be allowed to lease a private space?”
 “It’s an authorization to lease,” answered town counsel Mark Lanza. The town is not obligated to choose a lease over a town building.
Salter, however, wanted further clarification. If the original article passed, would the Selectmen be bound “to choose the lowest cost option if that lowest cost option were to move to a town owned building?”
“Yes,” answered Lanza.
Finally, asked Salter, if his amendment passed, would the Board of Selectmen retain the right to put Town Hall into either a town building or a building leased from a third party, whether it was the cheapest or not?
As the article was currently worded, answered Lanza, “if the town is going to spend one dime, it has to pick the lowest cost solution.”
By now, after 30 minutes, of discussion, Town Meeting was ready to vote on Salter’s amendment, which at times seemed forgotten in the quest to understand the intent behind the wording of the original article. When the vote on the amendment was finally called, it passed with a clear majority.
A desire for flexibility
The success of Salter’s amendment seemed to unleash a desire to grant the Selectmen still more flexibility in deciding where to relocate Town Hall.
First Turner took the floor once again, this time to move that that Selectmen be permitted to look for space at Devens facilities within Harvard’s borders. Office space within Harvard is limited, he said.
“I don’t understand why we are eliminating the possibility of finding office space on Devens which has…any number of buildings that are not being used.”
His amendment, which deleted the phrase “not including Devens” from the article, was not accepted as a friendly one by Selectmen, but passed easily when put to a vote.
“After the first vote, I thought, I really like letting the town decide this,” Wallace later told the Press.
One more amendment followed, this one from Paul Richards of Wescott Road, who moved that Selectmen be allowed to look outside of Harvard, as long as the properties considered were within an eight-mile radius of Town Hall. Richards cited the availability of space in Boxborough on Codman Hill Road. His amendment passed easily.
When it finally came time to vote on the amended article, it passed with the two-thirds majority it required.
“Passage [of Article 4] sends a message that choosing a location for Town Hall is not just a matter of dollars and cents,” reflected Wallace after the meeting. “There are many factors we should weigh.”
But during discussion of the first amendment, Selectman Tim Clark also noted, regardless of how the article was worded, the board is constrained by town finances.
“We [the Selectmen] have to look at the total cost from both an operational and project perspective,” he said. Selectmen have $4 million to pay for the renovation and a fixed amount in the operating budget for Town Hall. “We can’t create more pockets of money to spend on the project.”
“It’s really in everyone’s best interest—the building committee, the Selectmen and the town—to find something that provides us with an economic solution to a difficult problem, which will cause all of us some form of inconvenience, hopefully for a very short period of time, after which we will all emerge happy, smiling and hugging one another.”
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