Session 4, Beauty and the Beast

Last night we dealt with arguably the most popular and the most important business before Town Meeting this year.

We passed the CPA, sending to the voters of Arlington the question of whether we adopt this act or not. This I would characterize as the most popular article in front of Town Meeting this year, in the sense that it is what most people are interested in and will take away as the key action from this year's Town Meeting.

While this year's Town Meeting will be spoken of as "the one where they dealt with the CPA," many would say the most important article considered by us was article 21, "Amendments to the District Agreement of the Minuteman Regional Vocational School District."

In case you are unfamiliar with what our membership in the Minuteman school district means for Arlington, I will try to supply some background:

UPDATE: for a more articulate and informative explanation of this whole issue, go read the comments made last night by Paul Schlichtman of precinct 9, which he has shared with us all on his blog:
http://schlichtman.org/blog/2014/05/07/amending-the-minuteman-regional-agreement/

The Minuteman Regional Vocational School is a real gem.

It is governed by a school committee composed of representatives from each town that is part of the district. If you are a "member community," you get a vote on how the school is managed. This of course includes how much money is raised from member communities to spend on the school.

Each community gets one vote.

Funding the Minuteman works a little differently. Naturally, if your community only sends a couple of students to the school, it would be unfair for you to pay as much as a community that sends a hundred students to the school.

Herein lies the problem. Taken independently, the statements "one community one vote" and "one student one dollar" both seem fair and equitable.

Taken together, the statements fall apart.

Arlington, Belmont, and Lexington are three communities that send a lot of students to Minuteman. There are 16 member communities, and some of those don't send very many students at all. I believe it was said last night that Dover sends 1 student.

When a question comes up that involves a serious investment of money, towns like Dover can afford to vote their ideals. They are basically asked this question: "How much money should Arlington taxpayers spend on the Minuteman?"

In Town Meeting each year we vote on an appropriation to the Minuteman. This gives you the illusion of a choice. Once 11 other communities have passed the appropriation, it doesn't matter how Arlington votes. We are required by law to provide the money the other member communities have approved.

Let me say it again: the Minuteman Regional Vocational School is a real gem, and it isn't hard at all to understand why.

We approved a new agreement last night that will take steps toward lessening this nightmare. It doesn't go far enough, but it is a step in the right direction.

I'm hoping someone more knowledgeable than I will take the time to post a comment to this entry, providing the highlights of this new agreement. I don't want to take that on, as I don't have the materials in front of me right now to double-check my facts, and it is a complicated set of changes. That's part of the reason why this article doesn't win the title of Most Popular Article of Town Meeting, 2014.

Popular or not, it is probably the most important vote I have ever made, and may be the most important vote I ever make in Town Meeting.

Session 3, the CPA

We debated Article 22, which if passed would place a question before the voters on whether Arlington should adopt the Community Preservation Act, or CPA for short.

In a nutshell, adopting the CPA is accepting a small (current proposal is 1.5%) surcharge on existing property taxes, and pledging to spend that money on particular categories of projects: low income housing, the preservation of open space, historic preservation, and recreation projects.

There is a website where you can find out more about the CPA, here:
http://www.communitypreservation.org/

In exchange for accepting these limitations, the state provides matching funds of a variable amount depending on how high of a surcharge a community chooses to adopt and on how much money the state makes available for the program. I think of it as an employer match for a 401(k). There is money on the table, if you agree to the limitations.

The deliberations last night boiled down to 20 or 30 different arguments.

Those opposed to sending this before the voters argued that we have necessary things we need to pay for, and we have nice things to pay for. Things that would fall under the CPA, it is argued, are "nice" but not "necessary."

Those in favor of sending this before the voters argued the remaining 19 to 29 different points or so, all of which can be summed up as "It would be fantastic If we could find the money to do [insert your valued project here]."

That sounds like I’m being dismissive of the proponents arguments, and I’ll confess to some mild frustration with a lack of focus I perceived in proponents arguments, compared to the tight and narrow arguments being made by the opponents.

In defense of proponents arguments: if you look at it another way you take away this: the CPA can be used for all kinds of things that we currently routinely appropriate money for year after year after year.

With the CPA, the spending we already do on these projects will be cheaper for the taxpayer, thanks to the state matching funds.

Overall I don’t have the brain for this level of financial planning, and I can’t say whether we would spend as much money as we are asked to put into the CPA anyway even if we did not adopt it, or not.

I suspect the later, but if the former were true then the CPA seems a no-brainer to me. It makes our money go farther than it would otherwise, and that’s a good thing. There are even arguments being made that CPA money could be used partially to help pay for work at the High School and other very large capital projects we have looming in our near future.

It may still be a good idea to adopt the CPA, even if it results in us spending more money in these areas than we’d otherwise choose to.

Say that overtime the investment made in these projects returns dividends through a higher quality of life, a more desirable destination for people to visit and spend money, make us a more desirable destination to relocate to or establish a business: this could be a fiscal win for Arlington in the long run.

That scenario is more similar to the 401(k) many of us are encouraged to contribute to at work: there are other necessary ways we need to apply what money we have available, and we’re being offered this carrot in the form of matching funds to convince us to take a longer view.

What I believe, and this was only lightly touched on during our session last night, is that the voters in Arlington understand how important decisions about our financial future are.

Over here in East Arlington, we are very aware of what it means to our pocketbooks when we talk about the need to rebuild the High School, renovations we’re going to be asked to cover at the Minuteman Regional Vocational school, and choosing whether or not to adopt the CPA.

I don’t know how Arlington would vote on the CPA if they get that chance, but I do know that they are qualified to make this decision.

Further, from what I've heard from my neighbors, they want a chance to do so.

I will be voting to let them do just that.

PS: If you're reading this and you think the voters should consider this issue, I STRONGLY ENCOURAGE you to contact your Town Meeting members prior to Wednesday night's session and let them know you think that.

There are some powerful arguments being made against sending this question to the voters, and members are in a tough spot, trying to guess what the people want. So remove some of that guesswork for them, and just let them know.

You can find out who your Town Meeting members are, and how to contact them, here:
http://www.arlingtonma.gov/public_documents/ArlingtonMA_TownMeet/2014_TMMembers.pdf

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.