By MAUREEN DOHERTY
NORTH READING — At the upcoming Select Board meeting on Monday, February 13, in addition to holding a public hearing to set the dates of both the June 2023 and October 2023 Town Meetings, the board must take action on a Citizens’ Petition requesting a Special Town Meeting to reconsider the changes to the town’s betterment bylaw approved by the voters last June.
The action taken on Article 26 at the June 6, 2022 Annual Town Meeting amended the town’s General Bylaws by majority vote under “Assessments (Sewer Betterments).” The changes were certified by then-state Attorney General Maura Healey in October 2022. A legal notice detailing the entire approved bylaw is published in today’s Transcript. Such legal notices are required to be published in the newspaper after the certified amended bylaw is returned by the Attorney General’s office to the Town Clerk’s office, per MGL Chapter 40, Section 32, to notify the general public of the changes made.
The lead sponsor of the Citizens’ Petition seeking the Special Town Meeting is Adam Austin of 42 Main St., Unit 4. On Monday, Town Clerk Susan Duplin certified that the proper number of signatures of registered town voters were included with Austin’s petition. A minimum of 100 certified signatures are required to be submitted with the Citizens’ Petition. Now it is ready to be sent to the Select Board, which is required to call the Special Town Meeting within 45 days of its certification. The latest the meeting could be held is Monday, March 20.
Town Administrator Michael Gilleberto told the Transcript that the schedule is tight due to another requirement that Town Meeting warrants be mailed and received two weeks in advance of the date of any Town Meeting. Therefore, at Monday’s Select Board meeting, a constable will be present to receive what is anticipated to be the signed Special Town Meeting warrant, which will be expedited to the town’s printer the next day for it to be received back to Town Hall. Typically, the warrants are mailed by the town on a Friday and received by residents the following Monday, which is within the prescribed 14-day timeline if a Town Meeting is called for a Monday night.
“The Select Board may feel differently but I think you will hear that there will be a Special Town Meeting specifically for this purpose and that there will still be a spring Special Town Meeting dedicated to funding a wastewater project. I don’t know where the Select Board is going to land on the concept of betterments, but I know there certainly is concern about betterments based on the feedback that we got (in the fall). We heard it during the outreach that people were very concerned about the betterments,” Gilleberto said.
“In any scenario there were problems with that bylaw prior to the June Town Meeting,” he explained, because the way it was written did not provide clear-cut answers to how betterments could be assessed. For example, he said the old bylaw “described there being a calculation based on Title V flow and that the votes would be weighted based on how much flow a particular property had.”
“The crux of it seems to be the ability of the abutters to take a vote to oppose a betterment from being levied. That doesn’t stop a project from happening… Town Meeting could vote to do the project anyway, without a betterment, and it still would be able to lawfully occur, but revenue from assessing betterments would not be available to fund it,” he said.
Austin, the lead sponsor of the Citizens’ Petition, has spoken in opposition to the town’s proposed multi-million dollar sewer project at past meetings as well as the possible scenarios in which the town’s betterment bylaw could be used to assess costs to the properties along the proposed route, which includes single-family homes, residential condominiums, business condominiums and commercial properties in the general vicinity of Rte. 28, Park Street West beyond Rte. 28, Concord Street and Lowell Road.
After multiple public informational hearings were held throughout the fall on the wastewater project, during which the concerns and opposition of dozens of residents were aired, in November, the Select Board stated publicly that the abutters’ concerns were heard loudly and clearly and they would return to the drawing board to reconsider how to finance the project. After 2 1/2 months of additional study, the DPW and the town’s working group on the sewer project, in consultation with town’s consulting engineering firm Wright Pierce, intend to present alternative plans to the Select Board, also at Monday night’s meeting.
MONDAY’S MEETING MOVED TO DLL
Due to the high level of interest in this project and the Citizens’ Petition calling for the Special Town Meeting, Gilleberto told the Transcript that the Select Board meeting will be held in the Distance Learning Lab (DLL) at NRHS on Monday, Feb. 13 instead of Room 14 at Town Hall. Gilleberto added that the School Committee offered to move its meeting from the DLL to the Media Center at the school in order to accommodate the needs of the Select Board.
The Select Board’s complete agenda had not been posted at press time so the start time of the open session was not known. The board typically holds its executive sessions prior to the public session, however, a public hearing is scheduled for 8 p.m. so it would be the board’s intent to be ready for the open session to begin on time, Gilleberto said. There are situations, however, when an executive session runs longer than anticipated.