Sundowning

How to characterize last night's session of Town Meeting?

There was much less behavior that could be called "petty, ugly, and vile." Instead, last night was what I call our "honeymoon period," that period of time after violent outbursts when everyone tries to make nice. In Town Meeting this means statements made by many, imploring us all to just try to get along.

There was an astonishing amount of confusion, in spite of which, Town Meeting did it's job.

Maybe I shouldn't be so careless tossing around comments about how confused people were, as I'm now going to attempt to describe the motions, substitute motions, amendments, and final actions circling Article 11, the formation of the Community Preservation Committee, and to be fair it wasn't a simple thing to follow.

We began on Monday with a motion before us from the Board of Selectmen to establish the committee, how many members it would have (9), who 5 of the members were required to be under state law, who would identify candidates for the remaining 4 members, who would approve those appointments, how long a term on the committee would be, as well as other stuff (you can read the proposed language from the Board here, beginning on page 6).

If my memory is correct (I don't have the documents in front of me as I write this), there was one substitute motion and four amendments immediately in line to be considered. All but one amendment were aimed at revising who the appointed members would be, or who would appoint them. The other dealt with establishing term limits for members of the committee.

Two of the proposed changes were withdrawn by the person proposing them, realizing that others had already sought to accomplish more or less what his two proposals were aimed at.

Then another member re-submitted one of those, as he felt it did a better job of dealing with the original issue than the first two.

That's where things were left at on Monday night. Four proposed changes to the bylaw, one dealing with term limits and the other three with committee membership.

At the beginning of our second session, the three dealing with committee membership were withdrawn. Proponents of those three amendments put their heads together, and submitted one single substitute motion that they felt encapsulated what they each wanted to accomplish in their different amendments before. Henceforth, this new substitute motion was referred to as the Trifecta substitute.

Then a substitute was offered to the Trifecta, changing the composition of the appointing committee.

A bit of debate ensued about the merits of the different options, and whether or not it might be better to just stick with the original motion from the Board of Selectmen.

The specter of the committee being made up of members of a nebulous population referred to as "The Usual Suspects" was made by all sides in explaining why members ought to vote a particular way.

Finally, some member decided we'd gone on long enough, a motion was made to terminate debate, it passed, and it was time for Town Meeting to vote.

Now is when folks got truly confused.

We have before us the original motion of the Board of Selectmen, the amendment to establish term limits, the Trifecta substitute, and the amendment to the Trifecta substitute.

Here's how you vote in this situation:

1. Vote Yes or No to the amendment to the Trifecta substitute
2. Vote Yes or No to the Trifecta as it exists following Vote #1 (it was either amended, or it wasn't).
3. Vote Yes or No to the amendment to establish term limits, which will be placed on whichever the main motion is at this point (either the Trifecta Substitute, or the original motion of the Board of Selectmen).
4. Vote Yes or No on the final bylaw, as amended or substituted in the preceding votes, establishing a Community Preservation Committee.

To be fair, there's a longer than average parliamentary path to follow with this article. It's only the second night of Town Meeting this year, and we have a lot of new members that may not be that familiar with these sorts of procedures.

That said I saw members that I'd consider turning to for help if I were confused about something, entirely confused about what we were voting on.

Attempts were made to explain it all. Confusion still held the floor. Doug Heim, the Town Attorney, got up and gave a very clear description, at the end of which most people I think understood, and some others I imagine decided they'd just try to get through the best they could.

We progressed (painfully) through the votes. Vote #1 failed. Vote #2 failed. Vote #3 passed.

Now we were at Vote #4. This vote would establish the Community Preservation Act committee as originally proposed by the Board of Selectmen, amended to impose term limits on the members of that committee.

One of the chief proponents of the Trifecta substitute stands and I paraphrase what he asks "just to clarify things, it's true that if this fails the committee is formed just consisting of the 5 members prescribed by state law, right?"

At which point I nearly fall out of my chair in astonishment. There can be no town committee without a vote of the town to create it. If Town Meeting doesn't pass this last vote, there's no committee. CPA funds are still collected, but cannot be expended until such a committee is formed.

I decide right then and there that there must be something going on. A gas leak of some kind or something that is making everyone entirely incoherent.

Nonetheless, Town Meeting passes Vote #4, and the Community Preservation Committee is formed. In spite of our best efforts, We got it right in the end.

We then went on to take up some articles further down the Warrant, dealing with the Capital Budget, as the chair of Capital Planning will be out of town next week.

The issue of unaccounted water came up.

We ultimately got a fair amount of real work done, and concluded the evening hearing the introduction of Article 7, pertaining to signs. For more background on this issue, read what the proponent has to say in his posts covering the 2015 Town Meeting, night's one and two (and presumably also three).

I hope all this confusion is behind us now, and the rest of the meeting starts to go more smoothly than it has so far.

Splinters

The 2015 Annual Town Meeting kicked off last night. I'm running a bit behind, and haven't prepared the tables I'll use to report on what comes before us and how I've voted. I'll get that taken care of soon (I hope).

In the meantime, be sure and visit the Town Meeting page on the town's website.

There you can find the warrant, reports made to Town Meeting, and when electronic voting was utilized, the individual votes of Town Meeting members.

Last night we made it as far as Article 11, the establishment of a Community Preservation Committee, which is having amendments hung on it like it was a Christmas tree. The formation of the Community Preservation Committee is a result of the vote taken last Fall when Arlington passed the Community Preservation Act. This committee will prepare a plan and make recommendations to Town Meeting on what it recommends doing with funds raised under the act.

I anticipate we spend a good portion of Wednesday's meeting working through amendments, all generally concerned with who appoints the 4 members not already determined by state law. There are going to be 9 members total, 5 of whom must come from designated committees concerned with the different areas that are eligible to receive CPA funds.

As proposed by the Board of Selectmen, the 4 "extra" potential members will be screened by the Town Manager and a member of the Selectmen, and ultimately approved by a vote of the Board of Selectmen.

The various amendments would split this up, in a variety of different ways, between the Finance Committee, the Town Moderator, and the Capital Planning committee.

Watching this play out is a bit like watching a pack of jackals fighting over a bone, except that bone doesn't have any real meat on it, and is actually just a stick that fell out of a tree. By the time everyone is done, there may be nothing but splinters left. And that's the real potential for harm here: a splintered selection process means that members aren't selected based on how they will strengthen the whole. You want to pick members that compliment and strengthen each other, which you can't as effectively do when members are added so disparately.

This morning I thought this post would be about the depressing displays of petty fights carried out under the guise of our democratic process. The various instances of behavior that has been characterized as "petty, ugly, and vile." I've come to consider the issue that this sort of behavior represents to possibly be our greatest challenge in Arlington. This morning, I don't really know how to write about it. I just wish people would either grow up, or get the counseling they need.

Hopefully though the bulk of that sort of thing is behind us now, and we spend the rest of Town Meeting serving Arlington rather than exercising our individual vendettas and displaying our individual personality disorders.