By DAN TOMASELLO
LYNNFIELD —Voters overwhelmingly defeated a motion seeking to postpone the April 29 Spring Town Meeting to a future date.
With voters slated to vote on a proposed $4.65 million Proposition 2 ½ override and three articles related to the Lynnfield Rail Trail project (see separate stories), a long line of residents stretched from Summer Street down to Lynnfield Middle School with people waiting to get in and vote at Spring Town Meeting.
Due to the 1,218 voters in attendance, Spring Town Meeting was held in the LMS auditorium, cafeteria and gym. Spring Town Meeting was also delayed by 40 minutes from the 7 p.m. start time due the large number of voters in attendance waiting to get in and vote.
“Thank you for all of your patience,” said Town Moderator Steve Wash. “The irony usually about this time is we are trying to get a quorum into the building. It’s a credit to the townsfolk for coming out tonight for important issues.”
Walsh said voters in the LMS auditorium and cafeteria were going to vote with electronic clickers similar to the last several years, but residents in the gym had to use voter cards because the town ran out of the 760 clickers that were rented.
“We are going to do things slightly different tonight based on our crowd,” said Walsh.
Spring Town Meeting voted to appoint former School Committee member Tim Doyle and former Recreation Commission member Gerry Noumi to serve as assistant town moderators for the cafeteria and the gym on voice votes. Doyle served as the assistant moderator in the café while Noumi was the assistant moderator in the gym.
“We will do this together tonight,” said Walsh. “I know that we will get through it as seamlessly and as efficiently as possible.”
After Town Counsel Tom Mullen and Department of Public Works (DPW) Director John Scenna gave an overview of Articles 6, 7 and 8 that pertained to the Lynnfield Rail Trail, former Fire Department Lt. Richard Ripley made a motion to indefinitely postpone Spring Town Meeting due to the 1,218 attendees being spread out in the LMS auditorium, cafeteria and gymnasium.
“The sub-rooms are not getting half of the audio, the presentation material is not coming through and there are currently three types of voting going on,” said Ripley, who was in the gym. “These are important articles that the entire town has come together to address and to have this level of basically disenfranchising some of the voters is a problem. I would like to make the motion that we postpone the meeting until the town can get the meeting together enough with the appropriate style voting and the ability to present appropriately to all attendees. That is my motion.”
Former Town Moderator Joe Markey opposed Ripley’s motion. He said Walsh was “doing a great job.”
“Everything he is doing tonight is legal and is allowed under the law,” said Markey. “He is using everything in his power to allow this meeting to proceed. If we were to postpone this meeting, it would be a horror show to get everyone here tonight back. He is doing everything under Mass. General Law. He is a former state representative, he is an attorney and he knows what he is doing. Town counsel is here. (Walsh) is doing everything in his power to run an efficient meeting.”
Spring Town Meeting overwhelmingly voted to reject Ripley’s postponement motion.
While the town rented 760 clickers for Spring Town Meeting, most of the votes were cast on voice votes with the exception of the motions associated with the three Lynnfield Rail Trail articles, including the three motions that called the question on Articles 6, 7 and 8.
Spring Town Meeting’s 1,218-voter turnout was the second largest in Lynnfield history, trailing only the 2007 Spring Town Meeting when voters approved the zoning changes required to allow MarketStreet Lynnfield to be constructed.