Town Meeting commenced last night, and we got an impressive amount of work done, I thought.
Electronic Voting
I am very pleased that we passed Article 12, permitting Electronic Voting.
I serve on the Electronic Voting Study Committee.
A few amendments were offered that would have created serious problems down the road. Those amendments were defeated, and the articles passed as introduced.
Next year, if all goes well, Town Meeting will have this technology available.
As a result Arlingtonians will have access - when the system is used - to the voting records of their Town Meeting members.
There will be times when electronic-voting is not used. Many actions taken by Town Meeting are formalities, that pass unanimously.
For that matter, for many things voice voting is faster, saving time.
Maybe we'll come up with a way for members to record those votes for the record after the fact (for example, when a vote is unanimous, we could choose to post to that effect on the Town's website).
Immediately upon passing Article 12, Al Tosti of the Finance Committee moved to table articles 13 through 41 so we could consider Article 42, the appropriation of funds for electronic voting.
This morning I am undecided if this was done to keep us on topic, or for another reason: the Finance Committee recommended an appropriation of $10,000 for next year.
The catch is, the amount appropriated for next year would see Town Meeting through less than 8, and maybe less than 7 sessions.
There is a chance that Town Meeting may have thought of this and appropriated a bit more money than the $10,000 recommended.
Al Tosti's job is to guard Arlington's budget. It's an important job, and he does it well.
That said it may be a bit awkward next year when we show up one night to find we can't use electronic voting anymore, for however many sessions are left that year.
[Hey: maybe I should lay off any claims about intention here: both staying on topic, and more importantly avoiding a whole other debate on Electronic Voting, after we've already passed Article 12, is a very good reason to bring up Article 42 right away. It still happens that next year could be a bit awkward when Electronic Voting is suddenly unavailable, but that doesn't mean there was intent to avoid the discussion.
There are too many other legitimate, sound reasons for placing Article 42 in front of us last night.]
Medical Marijuana
Articles 7 and 8 dealt with zoning issues around medical marijuana dispensaries.
I was exceptionally conflicted on these votes.
Last year voters in Massachusetts approved medical marijuana. The vote in Arlington was 67.95% in favor to 32.05% opposed.
In Precinct 4, the vote was even more lopsided: 76.29% in favor to 23.71% opposed.
With that vote comes dispensaries.
As much as I like to think people are more rational than this, I doubt voters would be equally enthusiastic about a dispensary being located down the block.
Yes to medical marijuana, but not-in-my-backyard.
That disconnect was partially behind my conflicted feelings with these articles.
Another part was with how senseless I thought it was to vote on these articles last night.
On May 8th, just over 2 weeks from now, the State may finalize guidelines related to how these dispensaries are allowed to operate.
If we had waited a couple weeks, we may have had a much better idea about what it was we were regulating.
Finally, I felt conflicted because this issue was being considered in light of concern over what exposure minors would have to marijuana as a result of these dispensaries existing.
There are people in our community for whom each day is filled with pain.
There was exceptionally little acknowledgment of that fact during discussion last night.
Whether you think the medical use of marijuana is good or bad, I feel we owed those folks a bit more consideration than we gave them.
In the end, I voted for both articles, defining where dispensaries could be located (that vote failed), and instituting a one-year moratorium on establishing dispensaries in Arlington.
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