May is the time of town meeting. It’s a relatively archaic form of direct democracy that’s common in New England, which I grew up with in West Bridgewater. Despite being a town of almost 20,000, Norton still holds them. A few years ago some folks attempted to get a charter change through to move us to a town council, since turnout to town meeting is routinely <1% of registered voters, but that failed at the ballot (with 1775 votes against the change, which is a number I never have and never will see show up to town meeting…but I digress).
Town meeting’s big item is always the budget, though truth be told nobody ever asks questions about it as most who care get their input in with the various boards in the preceding months, and then there are always a few articles that get interesting. The surprise one this time around was reorganizing our zoning bylaws. That passed a normal vote and a standing vote, then went to a secret ballot, which added half an hour or so to the proceedings, where it eventually failed. It was the usual “they’re trying to sneak things by us!”, because a few small changes had been made; none that the main objector voiced concerned me, but he convinced enough people, clearly. I wasn’t intending to speak on that one, but did, as I figure it’s important to stand up when people suggest that elected volunteers are conspiring against the public.
An article trying to run sewer down to an extremely contaminated superfund site so it could be cleaned up and developed did not pass, which didn’t surprise me because there are a few very vocal residents who opposed it. The town will therefore lose a $3.5m MassWorks grant that we were granted in 2023. Imagine living on a street with a highly contaminated abandoned factory, complaining about the budget all the time and how we MUSTN’T raise taxes to do anything about it, then letting three and a half million dollars go down the drain. Couldn’t be me.
But now we come to the Good News portion of this letter: WE PASSED REZONING TO COMPLY WITH THE MBTA COMMUNITIES ACT! This was a long fight, with many community events (that few attended), and the usual scaremongering “do we want to become Brockton” anti-multifamily nonsense, but it won. I should note that it did so because it only needed a simple majority (it almost had 2/3, but not quite), where the other articles I’ve mentioned here also had a majority but required 2/3. This was sort of a best-case scenario: 2 areas rezoned in different parts of town (to split any potential impact to the schools across the 2 elementary schools) that are already multifamily, so they would be redeveloped if anything. And now, we’re still eligible for state grants, and won’t get sued by the AG! An incredible win, honestly, and a reminder that when folks turn up, we can make real change.
After that (well…after a few people hemmed and hawed and made town counsel explain why it was a majority not a 2/3), we largely zipped through the rest of the articles, but it was still a four and a half hour town meeting which was…a lot. Tuesday morning was not fun.
Nor was Thursday evening, when I went to a Select Board meeting to argue against attempts to force committees to meet in person (it’s not legal! they already tried it once! but they seem to want to try again!) and also speak against a not very sneaky attempt at getting Pride signs banned from the town common in June. I hadn’t intended to speak as someone else had already made the most relevant points, but then one of the town conservatives (locally famous for breaking campaign finance law!) got up to spew nonsense, so I felt I had to counter.
Between the speaking at meetings and getting letters to the editor published in the local paper (1, 2), I really do seem to be turning into my father. Not sure how to feel about that…
Anyway, I had plenty of other meetings this month- Norton Singers, Mansfield Animal Welfare Committee, Norton Cultural Council- on top of volunteering and work and OH I almost forgot the other Good News portion of the letter! My amazing hire who I am so excited about starts June 2nd, and in advance of her starting, I got a promotion to Customer Support Team Lead. :) I don’t love managing so I’m excited to be a lead again, where I can mostly just mentor and still do a ton of work in the queue. I’m very glad that they didn’t force this into a typical management structure right out of the gate.
As always, I welcome replies and would love to hear updates on your lives as well. Thanks for reading!