A primer for tonight’s Lenox Town Meeting

LENOX – Those wanting to see fireworks at this year’s town meeting should stick around until the end.

This year’s town meeting will be held tonight (May 2) at 7 p.m. in the Lenox Middle and High School auditorium. All Lenox voters are eligible to participate in and vote at town meeting.

This year’s warrant has 24 articles. In contrast to last year’s town meeting, there are no citizen’s petition articles on the warrant this year, all articles having been placed there by either the board of selectmen, the school committee or other town committees.

The voters will be asked to approve both the town and school budgets for fiscal year 2014. The proposed FY ’14 town budget is $6,093,573, while the proposed school budget is $11,089,180.

Both budgets have been approved by the finance committee, and the committee has stated this year’s budget as a whole is consistent with Lenox’s long-term financial planning goals.

While most articles will likely pass without any discussion, there are three on this year’s warrant that may spark some debate. They are:

Article 15

There’s a good chance Article 15 will uneventfully and overwhelmingly pass, but nothing is ever a sure thing when it comes to the Community Preservation Fund.

The Community Preservation Committee (CPC) received multiple requests for funding this year, but only approved three: $75,000 for phase one of the Church on the Hill Cemetery restoration, $30,000 for the Edith Wharton Restoration General Stable Project and $18,500 for the restoration of a Lenox Fire Company historic truck.

Of the three items, only the money for the Edith Wharton Stable Project is likely to cause any comment. Given The Mount’s popularity, it could pass easily, but there may also be objections to giving town money to a private organization.

Article 19

If there’s an article on this warrant that might ignite some heated words, this would be it.

Article 19 asks the town to authorize the transfer of $18,000 as a supplemental appropriation to the FY ’13 legal expenses budget in order to cover the cost so far of the lawsuit over the Kennedy Park Belvedere.

Largely a symbolic gesture (even if the article fails, the town will still have to pay the legal bills it has incurred, it’ll just use emergency funds), don’t count on this being voted on without extensive comment from the floor.

Article 22

In what will be the most closely watched vote of the night, Lenox voters will decide whether or not to grant a conservation restriction (CR) on the town’s watershed lands.

The CR was crafted as a result of the efforts of the town’s watershed protection committee, which determined a CR would be the best way to preserve the scenic and natural beauty of the watershed lands, while still allowing for waterworks expansion. The proposal has been unanimously endorsed by both the board of selectmen and the conservation commission.

The conservation commission would co-hold the CR with the Berkshire Natural Resources Council (BNRC), a non-profit organization. The town would still own and administer the land, with the BNRC primarily serving as a policing agent.

Still, the article’s passage is far from certain. The water department is not in favor of the CR, and some citizens are opposing the CR because they don’t want to take away control of the land from future generations.

In order to pass, Article 22 will require a two-thirds majority vote. Another CR, which would have been co-held by the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife and contained $1 million in funding from the state, was defeated at town meeting three years ago.

Posted by Bera B. Dunau on May 2, 2013. Filed under Community News,News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry