Cemetery Parking

After working through the articles for the Special Town Meeting (for a description of why we have a Special Town Meeting, go read Dan Dunn's blog post for last night) we resumed discussion of Article 12, which sought to establish parking restrictions in Mount Pleasant Cemetery.

My guess is that if we had moved a little quicker on Monday and held a vote that night, this would have passed then, and I'd be writing this morning about our debate on the CPA.

Take that prediction with a grain of salt. My recent track record on predicting vote results, turnout, and pretty much all things related to Arlington politics has been abysmal. I should try and learn from this, and stop trying to make predictions.

There was one argument against passing these restrictions last night that really got to me: Town Meeting does not traditionally legislate where people can and cannot park, at least not on such a specific case-by-case basis.

I agreed with the argument that we did not want Town Meeting feeling it should rightfully take up the issue of where parking is allowed and not allowed on every street in town.

We want these policies to be consistent throughout town, and that is something you stand a much better chance of getting with a smaller board than you do with a 252 member legislative body, deciding policy on this block over here, that block over there, on what days and hours, and etc.

That concern had me twisting in the wind, figuring out how I ought to vote.

I felt that this instance in Mount Pleasant cemetery was a unique enough situation that Town Meeting would be able to stop itself from going down the path of micro-managing parking in town. Not last night though, as we discussed this issue for the bulk of the evening.

"If we beat this dead horse any more, can we bury it in the cemetery?"
--Paul Schlichtman, Precinct 9

Before it was all over, we had a motion to terminate debate, a motion to postpone debate, a motion to amend the language of the restriction, and another motion to terminate debate before we voted on the motion to amend and the motion to vote on the amended substitute motion that would establish the restriction.

I did something I have never done before: I did not vote "Yes" to terminate debate.

I have always felt that Town Meeting spends a lot of time rehashing the same arguments or introducing minor statements that don't change our votes. Better to just take the vote and move on. After the issue came up regarding whether Town Meeting ought to legislate parking restrictions in the first place, I wasn't prepared to stop listening. At that moment, I didn't know how I was going to vote.

I still couldn't bring myself to vote "No" against terminating debate. I cast the lone abstention on the question.

An hour later I was feeling like my old self again, and ready for a chance to terminate debate and take the vote.

When that finally happened, I chose to vote for the restrictions.

The rest of Town Meeting surprised me, and defeated the proposal.

What happens now? I bet you'll hear different answers to that depending on who you ask.

The issue has been significantly described, and people made much more aware of it. Even among members of the Board of Selectmen, there is a far greater understanding of the issue.

I believe and hope that this will result in this issue being seriously addressed.

In the end the proponents of this issue have "won" even though the vote went against them. They will see the change in policy and behavior that they sought to achieve with this bylaw that did not pass.

Of course you'll recall how abysmal my track record of predictions has been of late, with regards to these things.

So we'll just have to wait and see.