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Flouridation article rejected by voters

By Natasha Clark

Reminder Assistant Editor



LONGMEADOW Last Tuesday, 175 residents attended the fall Special Town Meeting. Warrant Articles, 15, 16 and 26 failed, and Article 21 was withdrawn.

Articles 15 and 16, according to their summaries, dealt with simplifying the committee appointment process by "reducing the need to interview sole applicants or reappointments, and by reducing the waiting period before making an appointment."

Article 26 offered "voters the opportunity to re-evaluate water fluoridation in light of health (listed at www.slweb.org), ethical, legal, religious, safety and security issues coming to light in the two decades since the first and only ballot vote imposed fluoridation by a slim majority in 1986."

This issue has been on several Town Meeting warrants over the last few years. Longmeadow resident and former Water and Sewer Commission member Bruce Randall was a lead petitioner that was partly responsible for collecting well over the required 100 signatures that are needed to have it placed on the Special Town Meeting warrant.

After a citizen brought the possible effects of water flouridation to Randall, he told Reminder Publications that he studied and examined the issue thoroughly.

"Flouride is a prescription substance, it's not even necessary to the body," Randall explained two days after the Special Town Meeting.

The benefits of flouride have been heavily debated since flouride first began to make its way into public water systems in the early 1940s. The Centers for Disease Contol has several reports that expose both the benefits and potential health risks from the substance.

According to Randall, there was also some confusion when it came to tallying the votes on Article 26; however, he doesn't believe there was any intentional wrongdoing on anyone's part.

"They had counters come because it was close enough, but before the counters had given their results, someone suggested a yes vote recount," Randall explained, adding that there was confusion and he wasn't sure if the count was right, either.

Town Clerk Mary Pequitnot said that they are already coming up with ideas to restructure the Town Meeting voting system..

"We were disscusing a different way of counting," Pequitnot told Reminder Publications.

She said that one idea is to define each section of voters by one person [who counts the votes] and have another person verify the count. Currently, voters are divided into five sections and can have up to six counters. "People are confused [with the current system]," Pequitnot added.