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Date: 5/16/2022
BELCHERTOWN – On May 9, Belchertown residents met in the Belchertown High School Auditorium to vote on 28 warrant articles during Annual Town Meeting.
Before jumping into the Annual Town Meeting there was a one-article Special Town Meeting to wrap up the fiscal year 2022 (FY22) budget which was quickly approved.
With little discussion, Articles 1 through 8 passed quickly, as many of these items were housekeeping items present in most Town Meetings.
Article 9 was a request to approve the town’s recommended $57.5 million FY23 budget. To pass the budget, voters were required to approve each line item, including the stormwater enterprise fund, which led to some debate among the residents. One resident said he was concerned about the transparency of the town because of the fund and encouraged residents to vote against it.
In response, Department of Public Works (DPW) Director Steve Williams explained how the enterprise fund is able to have free cash.
“The stormwater budget is a self-supporting budget, it’s an enterprise fund so fees collected stay in that fund. Any excess fees collected or monies unspent stay in that fund, which is why we have free cash,” he said. “The reason we have excess funds is because there are monies unspent in years past, we don’t anticipate that this year, our collections have been better than what we expected and new growth goes into this as well.”
Over the last three years, Williams said the budget has been relatively even, sitting at around $337,000 dating back to FY21. By voting against the fund, Williams said several positions and projects would have to be eliminated including a position in the DPW, the stormwater administrator, town street sweeping, catch basin cleaning, required engineering from the Environmental Protection Agency and any capital used for stormwater management best practices around town.
Ultimately voters approved the stormwater enterprise fund along with the rest of the budget items.
Following the Article 9 discussion, Articles 10 through 20 passed with little debate. Many of these articles were housekeeping items including a transfer into the town’s stabilization fund, an update in the salary ranges for many management positions in town and to update the town’s zoning bylaw to include language about dog day cares.
Article 21 sparked a debate over creating an Agricultural Value-Added District in the zoning bylaw and Planning Board Chair Daniel Beaudette spoke to the motion and what it would entail.
“The reason for this is to further plans to rehabilitate the Lampson Brook Farm and provide business opportunities for agricultural entrepreneurs. Last year the legislature enacted a law to guide the future of these properties on the old state school farm,” he said. “This is to be an enterprise zone for promoting new businesses and needed zoning to permit that to happen. Within the adoption of this zone a big step will be taken to complete the property and help those farm-related businesses in town.”
Beaudette added that the Lampson Brook Farm Committee, which was created out of the law, worked closely with the Planning Board when developing the bylaw change. He also jumped in front of the issue that would become the biggest topic of discussion – farm labor housing.
“The suggestion for that particular use came from the Lampson Brook Farm Committee because they felt an important part of farming is having farm labor and if you don’t have housing for them, you can’t put them in tents, they have to stay somewhere. It’s just one of myriad possibilities for that property,” Beaudette said.
Some of the other uses under the bylaw would include a conference center, commercial food processing, agricultural manufacturing, retail or wholesale outlets for agricultural products, restaurants and more. Beaudette said the goal was to set up a bylaw before the state could do anything with the property.
“It was our general feeling that we wanted to get the town’s imprint on the property before the state did. The state is going to work in its own inevitable fashion, but nobody knows exactly what it’s going to look like and by having some zoning put out there by the town, we have a little more control over what’s going to happen in the future,” he said.
While Select Board Vice Chair Jim Barry said he was in favor of the uses for the property, he said he was against how large the area would be.
“These are things that we could do down at the enterprise zone, which is that slim piece of property where the old silos are, which aren’t going to be used for much else so we might as well try to move some business there rather than on the community farm parcel or business farm parcel,” he said. “It covers numerous acres above and beyond the industrial zone. Please don’t say yes to this warrant article because it means that whoever takes over the property next could put any of these activities anywhere in that big, beautiful farmland.”
While some residents spoke both in favor and against the Agricultural Value-Added District, residents voted to send the proposal back to the Planning Board for further revision.
By sending the bylaw back for revision rather than voting no, a revised bylaw can be brought back before Town Meeting within two years.
For Articles 22 through 27, voters quickly approved each with little discussion. These articles included the Community Preservation Committee’s appropriations for projects which were a $9,500 gravestone preservation project for Mt. Hope and Hillcrest Cemetery, $20,000 for repairs to windows at the historic building owned by Hope United Methodist Church and $80,000 to fund two pickleball courts at the Chestnut Hill Recreation Area.
For Article 28, the meeting’s final article, Barry brought forward a revision to the town’s recall bylaw, which the Select Board worked on throughout the month of April leading into the meeting. In the article, Barry said there were four proposed changes in the bylaw. One change is that 15 people would be required to file an affidavit while one is currently required. With the revisions, 66 percent of the average number of voters at the prior three elections with a minimum of 750 people would be required to sign a recall petition. That same number of people would also be required to show up for the vote for the recall to be considered valid. The recall could also only occur six months after someone was elected, or prior to the final six months of their term.
While some members of the public claimed the bylaw proposal was rushed, residents still voted to approve the recall bylaw changes, which will now head to the state legislature before it can be officially added to the town’s bylaws.