Sterling Town Meeting: Vote No on Article 46

Among the articles on the agenda at Monday’s Sterling town meeting is Article 46, which would set guidelines for the erection and use of windmills for electric power. At first blush, it seems like a good idea. But a close reading of the regulations reveals that the proposal would serve mainly to prohibit wind power from all but the largest land owners in town.

Citizens of Sterling should reject Article 46 and ask the Light Board and the Planning Board to come back with a proposal that allows homeowners to pursue wind energy as an option.

The proposed bylaw would set such restrictive rules around the siting of a windmill that it would be nearly impossible to erect one:

Setbacks. The minimum setback for the wind turbine shall be maintained equal to the overall height calculation plus one hundred (100) feet from all property boundaries of the site on which the WECS [Wind Energy Conversion System] is located. In addition, the WECS shall be set back a distance of the Height Calculation plus one hundred (100) feet from any ways, access easements, trails, ascertainable paths and above ground utility lines.

An earlier clause sets the maximum height of a turbine at 100 feet, so a land owner who erected a windmill of the maximum height in the dead center of her lot could only do so if the lot were at least 400 feet across and 400 feet deep (100-foot windmill height plus 100-foot setback on all four sides).

In other words, a maximum height windmill is only available to landowners with at least 3.67 acres of land if the land is completely vacant. If the lot has a home on it with an above-ground electric, phone, or cable lines; or if the lot has a driveway, then the 200-foot setback would be calculated from there.

(A landowner hoping to erect a 50-foot windmill would need a vacant lot 300-feet square, or a little over 2 acres.)

The main point of requiring a setback should be safety—that is, if the windmill were to fall down (or if ice were to fall from a rotor) it shouldn’t land on any cars, homes, your neighbor’s property, etc. Apparently the crafters of Sterling’s bylaw are worried that a fallen windmill will bounce, roll, dance, shimmy, or otherwise move a distance of twice the fall zone. Either that, or they don’t want any windmills in town.

By comparison, here is the setback provision in the model bylaw proposed by the Massachusetts Division of Energy Resources and the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs to assist towns in the crafting of their WECS regulations:

4.1 Setbacks
Wind turbines shall be set back a distance equal to the total height of the wind turbine from all inhabited structures, overhead utility lines, public road or right of way and at least 5 feet from property boundaries.

4.1.1 Setback Waiver
The building inspector may reduce the minimum setback distance if written permission is granted by the entity with care and control over the affected asset.

The state suggests that a turbine needs only to be setback by the height of the structure. It only requires the setback to be from public ways and utility lines (not “trails” or “ascertainable paths”), and it only suggests that it be five feet from your neighbor’s property (assuming that it meets other setback provisions).

The state’s proposed bylaw assumes that wind energy is something to be embraced, and its provisions encourage the use of wind energy. The proposed Sterling bylaw is meant to restrict it.

Now, not every town that has a WCES bylaw is as permissive as the state’s proposal (most that I reviewed included the property line as one of the items required by the setback), but none of the ones I found were nearly as restrictive as Sterling’s. Here are the first ten current or proposed Massachusetts town bylaws that I found by doing a Google search, and their setback requirements:

• Ashby: Total height + 25 feet
• Athol: 1.1 x the total height
• Bourne: Total height + 10
• Hamilton: Total height
• Hardwick: Total height
• Harvard: Total height + 20 feet
• Millbury: Total height
• Paxton: Total height
• Scituate: 0.75 x the total height
• Winchendon: Total height + 10 feet

One of the ten towns requires a setback of less than the height of the tower, four require a setback equal to the height of the tower, and five require setbacks greater than the height of the tower. But even the most restrictive of those only requires a setback of 25 feet.

The Harvard bylaw has not yet been ratified and is before the town meeting this month. Despite setback regulations that are much less confining than Sterling’s, a former member of Harvard’s Wind Energy Conversion Systems Task Force told the Harvard Press that the Harvard proposal was too restrictive:

The way the amendment is currently structured and worded, it is basically a prohibition on residential windmills in Harvard.

The same goes for Sterling. Residents who believe that the town should allow its citizens to pursue alternative sources of energy should join me in voting no on Article 46.

Tags: Sterling Massachusetts Town Meeting Wind Energy

"The bad news was the unions..."

I was looking at the official minutes from some recent meetings of the Sterling Board of Selectmen and I came across this summary of the 2010 budget from the April 1 meeting:

The good news was that there would be no layoffs and no pay cuts.

The bad news was the unions, which ultimately cost the town money and the school budget that increases yearly.

The police, firemen, and DPW workers in town are the "bad news." With this attitude from our elected and appointed officials, I'm guessing labor negotiations are a real hoot.

Tags: Massachusetts Town Meeting Sterling

Radical proposal to change Sterling's government must be stopped

The frustrations that have been building in Sterling over the last year towards the Board of Selectmen and their tone-deaf performance in relation to a number of issues is coming to a head. At Monday's special town meeting, a citizen petition will be voted that could significantly change the way Sterling has done business for the last 120 years.

The radical article is Article Three, which would strip the Selectmen of the power to make any decisions on behalf of the town if presented with a matter of any significance. It would cripple the town’s ability to make any decisions quickly, since any significant item would have to be brought before the town for a vote. It would relegate the position of Selectman to little more than a glorified reporter posting updates on a website or a talk-show host facilitating open forums.

It must be defeated.

Here is the current succinct, 26-word definition of the duties of the Selectmen from the town bylaws:

Section 1. The Selectmen shall exercise a general supervision over all matters affecting the interest or welfare of the town, not otherwise provided for.

This definition has not changed since it was approved in 1889. It has worked for 120 years. And now, because of a Select Board that has been unresponsive, secretive and has generally had a really, really bad year, a group of townspeople are looking to completely overreact and saddle us with this 267-word jumble of unenforceable conditions:

Section 1. The Selectmen shall exercise a general supervision over all matters affecting the interest or welfare of the town, not otherwise provided for, and shall (a) remain well-informed about all such matters; and (b) keep the citizens and officials of the Town of Sterling timely and well-informed as well. However, insofar as any such matters will have, or could reasonably be expected to have, a fairly major or significant impact on the Town of Sterling from any perspective-be it financial, environmental, or otherwise- the Selectmen shall (c) advise the citizens of Sterling promptly on learning of the matter; (d) keep the citizens of Sterling timely and well-informed of such matters, as and when information becomes available; and (e) refrain from entering into any agreements and/or commitments without the citizens of Sterling as a whole having first rendered an informed vote with respect to any such agreements and commitments. With respect to all matters of such importance and significance to the Town of Sterling, the Selectmen’s obligations pursuant to subparagraph (d) above shall, at a minimum, require regular, up-to-date and informative postings on the Town of Sterling website, and Open Sessions where the Selectmen present the latest information and respond to all inquiries made by Sterling’s citizens. However, this is not intended to require the Selectmen to disclose information that they are not entitled to disclose as a matter of law, nor limit their right to withhold specific information to the extent, but only to the extent that such information qualifies, under the particular circumstances, for a legal exemption from disclosure under Massachusetts law and if it is in the best interests of the people of Sterling that the Selectmen exercise that exemption.

Before I break down all of the problems with the proposed new law, let me make this entirely clear: the Board of Selectmen have been ineffective responding to the issues of the last year or so. They appear to have violated the open meeting law by secretly discussing the Wekepeke with Nestle; they refused to take a position on the Wekepeke question until September, four months after Clinton rejected the plan; they dumped members of the Council on Aging and Personnel Board after the start of the fiscal year and did not communicate with the removed members; they are not proactive in informing citizens of the reasons for their actions, and do not educate the town on the actions they hope to take.

In short, they’ve been doing a poor job.

But the answer is not to break a system that has worked since the 19th century, it is to vote out the Selectmen who are not doing their jobs. There is an election every year, and we keep sending the same guys back to town hall. Someday, we will have a Board of Selectmen that we can trust, and when that happens, it would be a disaster if they were hamstrung by this suffocating bylaw.

Let’s go line-by line and review the problems with this proposal:

Section 1. The Selectmen shall exercise a general supervision over all matters affecting the interest or welfare of the town, not otherwise provided for, and shall

(a) remain well-informed about all such matters; and

How is this enforceable? Who determines what level of knowledge must be reached for someone to be “well-informed”? What is the remedy if a Selectman is deemed to be not “well-informed”?

(b) keep the citizens and officials of the Town of Sterling timely and well-informed as well.

I think this means to suggest that the citizens and officials must be well informed in a timely fashion. (As it reads, it suggests that the Selectmen must keep citizens and officials “timely,” which really isn’t fair since I’m often late for things and I’d hate for my Selectmen to be punished because I forgot to set my alarm…but I digress). Again, what is meant by “timely” and what is the “well-informed”? Not to mention that to “keep the citizens and officials” in line with anything is an impossible standard. Perhaps if the clause required the Selectmen to “inform the citizens…” it would make a little more sense, but the way it’s written the Selectmen are responsible for the citizens’ level of information and that is an impossible standard.

However, insofar as any such matters will have, or could reasonably be expected to have, a fairly major or significant impact on the Town of Sterling from any perspective-be it financial, environmental, or otherwise- the Selectmen shall

This paragraph is startling in its breadth and scope. It does not define what matters meet the standard of “fairly major or significant impact on the Town of Sterling.” However, it does say that it could include matters “from any perspective.” Think about that. From any single citizen’s perspective, a failure to plow a street on time or a fix a street light that has gone out could have a significant impact. According to the breadth of this clause, such an event could trigger the following:

(c) advise the citizens of Sterling promptly on learning of the matter;

(d) keep the citizens of Sterling timely and well-informed of such matters, as and when information becomes available; and

(e) refrain from entering into any agreements and/or commitments without the citizens of Sterling as a whole having first rendered an informed vote with respect to any such agreements and commitments.

The article then goes on to describe how the Selectmen may keep citizens informed.

To take a literal reading of this portion of the proposed bylaw if someone has an event that would have a fairly major impact from any perspective, the Selectmen must inform the town, keep the citizens informed as changes warrant, and “refrain from entering any…commitments” that might fix the problem until town meeting is convened to debate and vote on the item. Grinding the gears of government to a halt while the town either waits for town meeting or convenes meeting upon meeting upon meeting to decide governmental matters will render town government impotent.

Keeping the town informed is a good thing, and Lord knows the current Board of Selectmen doesn’t seem to find that to be a particularly important part of what they are doing. But again, the remedy is to vote in people who will commit to keeping the town informed and vote out those who do not take that responsibility seriously.

Kicking the crutches out from under the Board of Selectmen does more than incapacitate the board, it cripples the entire town. Tuning the Board of Selectmen into an essentially ceremonial post may punish the current officeholders, but it will punish the other 7,997 of us as well.

Tags: Massachusetts Town Meeting Sterling

Town Meeting: Groundhog Day

Either the Telegram and Gazette has made a mistake, is trying to play a cruel joke on the people of Sterling, or someone has made the mother of all motions to reconsider. According to today's online version, we're all getting back together Monday for Town Meeting:

Friday, May 16, 2008

Town meeting to act on $18.6M budget
Wachusett articles also on warrant

By Sandy Meindersma CORRESPONDENT

STERLING— Voters will be asked to spend $18.6 million for municipal and school budgets as part of the 61-article annual town meeting scheduled for 7 p.m. Monday.

One nine-plus hour Town Meeting is enough, thank you.

Tags: Sterling Massachusetts Town Meeting Telegram and Gazette

Town Meeting: No to WRSD spending, but will it matter?

Sterling’s town meeting, which began at 6:30 Monday evening, finally ended Tuesday about 20 minutes before it would have been Wednesday, much to the relief of the 100 or so exhausted townspeople who took over nine hours to slog through 77 articles across two warrants. The decision that was potentially the most important was the town meeting’s vote to reject one of the proposed amendments to the Wachusett regional School District Agreement. From Article 61:

To see if the Town will vote to approve the amendment of Section 16. CAPITAL EXPENDITURES FROM SURPLUS of the Amended Wachusett Regional School District Agreement, as recommended and approved by vote of the Regional District School Committee on January 28, 2008, or act or do anything relative thereto....

Summary: The proposed amendment deletes the words "Regional District School" where they precede the word "Committee", deletes the clause after "Section 16" which reads: "not to exceed $250,000 in any fiscal year or for any single project, and", and by inserting the fraction (2/3) after the words "two thirds", a copy of the proposed Amendment is on file with the Town Clerk in a report entitled "Wachusett Regional School District Committee Recommendations for Changes to Regional Agreement Annual Town Meetings 2008."

The article was one of five articles regarding changes to the district agreement. All of them appear to essentially be an effort to modernize the language in the agreement. The other four articles were easily approved, but this article is a little different. In addition to modernizing the language, the amendment would strike the provision which requires the school committee to get approval from member towns to spend more than $250,000 from the district’s surplus funds. The town’s Finance Committee recommended against passage because removing that language would give the school district carte blanche to spend whatever they please from the surplus without any oversight. The article failed by a rather large margin.

The townspeople at the meeting probably believed, as I did, that we had killed the amendment because we had voted it down, but it appears the amendment could still pass over Sterling’s objections. During discussion of the article, I asked the members of the School Committee if all five towns in the district had to approve a change in the agreement in order for it to pass or it the rules only required three or four towns to approve. I and the rest of the town meeting were assured that all five towns needed to approve any changes. Unfortunately, that is incorrect:

This Agreement may be amended by recommendation of the Regional District School Committee and approval of member towns of the District by majority vote at an annual or special town meeting provided that not more than one town disagrees.

So while we thought that the amendment was dead, in reality it only takes four of five towns to approve the amendment in order for it to take effect. Paxton and Princeton have approved the amendment; Holden and Rutland have yet to hold their town meetings. If either Holden or Rutland rejects the change, it will not pass. If both approve, then the amendment will take hold regardless of Sterling’s vote.

(Just to be clear that I am not accusing the members of the school committee of any sort of deception here. I honestly think that they probably hadn’t thought about it before the question was asked and believed that a unanimous vote was necessary. The more I participate in government--town meeting, Democratic Town Committee, etc.--the more I am coming to the conclusion that if one is going to be involved and hopes to be make the most informed decisions possible, he or she needs to be prepared. While it would have been nice to get the right answer when I asked the question, I could have looked it up before the meeting or brought a copy of the charter with me. As it is, the information on whether or not five or four towns is needed to pass an amendment wouldn’t have changed the vote, but it would have helped voters understand the impact—or lack of impact—of their decision.)


Tags: Sterling Massachusetts Town Meeting

Town Meeting: In it for the long haul

I breezed into last night’s town meeting at 7:00 on the dot, figuring that by the time everyone got signed in and seated we’d be ready to start in on the 62 articles up for resolution. I didn’t plan on attending the Special Town Meeting at 6:30 since it essentially was just to clean up any loose ends from the current fiscal year and appropriate whatever leftover funds we had to necessary accounts. Nothing to it, really.

Or, maybe not. It took us 2 hours and 55 minutes to get through what I thought would be 15 rubber-stamp decisions. The Regular Town Meeting did not begin until 9:25, and we only got through nine of the articles before adjourning at 11:10. So we’re back again tonight for the remaining 53 items.

What took so long? For one, the town debated the question of whether or not to give merit pay increases for the last six months of 2008. The increases would only have been for those workers who received favorable reviews from their superiors. The merit raise would have been 3%, and the town meeting was being asked to appropriate the $25,000 necessary to pay for the raises. After well over an hour of discussion, the motion was defeated by a relatively close vote.

I was stunned. To me, it seemed like this was an easy thing to do. Take $25,000 of money that is left over from FY08 revenues and use it to fund merit pay increases for town workers who have earned it.

But the Board of Selectmen and the Finance Committee did not do a very good job explaining the article. Instead of framing it in small terms (for instance, a DPW worker making $14.00 would get an increase to $14.42 per hour, or less than $17 per week), the article was described as a 3% increase which was payable over the last six months of the fiscal year so it was really only a 1.5% increase as far as the town was concerned since they were only paying it out over the last half of FY08. That begged the question from many townspeople of whether the increase was really 6% since there is an automatic 3% step increase at the start of FY09. The response from Finance was that it was really just a 4.5% increase during calendar year ’08 since it was just 1.5% in January and 3% in July. But since people get paid weekly and not by the fiscal year, isn’t it really 3% now and 3% later so town workers are really getting a 6% raise…and around and around for over an hour.

Understandably, many in the audience were confused. Perhaps someone could have stood up and made the point that we were looking to spend a very small sum of money—about the cost of a family car—so that the guys who dig ditches and keep our water flowing and electricity running could get paid another $17 per week (and I do not exempt myself from that criticism. I could have made the point and did not). But instead, we squabbled over whether or not the increase was 1.5% or 3% or 4.5% or 6%.

The evening was further lengthened by about a half hour when we got to the final article of the Special Town Meeting and organizers realized that the paper ballots required for this particular question had not been distributed when we signed in, so the gymnasium was cleared and all 175 or so of us had to line up and sign in once again to get our ballots.

The most interesting dynamic to part one of the miniseries that has become Town Meeting was the significant level of distrust many townspeople and the personnel board have toward the Board of Selectmen. For reasons I don’t understand, the personnel board opposed both the merit pay raise and the creation of a part-time Human Resources position, which was defeated around 11:05 last night. It seems to me that the personnel board would be working on behalf of workers who would benefit from both merit pay increases and a professional dedicated to HR issues, but the personnel board opposed both. Further, there was a general thread among many of those who spoke that “something else is going on” with the Selectmen and that they were somehow “trying to sneak one in” with the changes they hoped to make in the personnel area.

I haven’t seen it, but I guess I’ll get another four or more hours of evidence tonight.

Tags: Sterling Massachusetts Town Meeting

Town Meeting: How far should we extend the "Right to Farm?"

Town meeting is tonight. Responsible citizens like me (pat, pat) will head on down to the school at 7:00 and spend four or so hours on the hard bleachers slogging through 62 articles. How a town with an otherwise sleepy political landscape can manage to put 62 articles on the warrant is beyond me (fellow sleepy political town Lancaster had only 20 articles when they met last week, for instance). As I combed through the pile of appropriations for this project or that, one article stands out.

The most interesting is the proposal that Sterling become a “Right to Farm” community. Right to Farm towns generally make it easier for local farmers by making it harder for abutters to sue them if they don’t like the odor, dust, loud machines, and other aesthetic byproducts of farming. Sterling has had a long history of family farming and still hosts a number of orchards, stables, and other farms.

In theory, I think this is a good idea, although not everybody agrees. But there is one section of the bylaw that I strongly object to. The law provides that all new home buyers receive a written notification of the Right to Farm provisions and that all landowners also receive the notice yearly. The notification states (emphasis mine):

It is the policy of this community to conserve, protect and encourage the maintenance and improvement of agricultural land for the production of food, and other agricultural products, and also for its natural and ecological value. This disclosure notification is to inform buyers or occupants that the property they are about to acquire or occupy lies within a town where farming activities occur. Such farming activities may include, but are not limited to, activities that cause noise, dust and odors. Buyers or occupants are also informed that the location of property within the Town may be impacted by commercial agricultural operations including the ability to access water services for such property under certain circumstances.

In other words, good luck if your well is fouled with manure or fertilizers, or runs dry because a farm in the aquifer uses more water than the aquifer can replenish. Considering the recent discussions Sterling has been having in town about water rights, and the widespread opposition to Clinton’s Wekepeke proposal at least in part on the basis of its potential to affect other wells in the aquifer, this clause needs to be struck from the proposed bylaw in order for me to support it. The ability to access clean water is just as important when the threat is from a farm as it is if the threat is from a big retail corporation. To leave this clause in the bylaw would be hypocritcal.

While the water clause is in the sample bylaw provided by the state Department of Agricultural resources, many towns have omitted it from their bylaws. Sterling should do the same.

The other issue I have with the notification is that the annual notice to residents “shall be provided by the Town to landowners each fiscal year by mail.” Printing and mailing 5,000 or so notices seems to me to be an unnecessary expense. Sterling should provide the notice in a publication that is already printed--such as the Annual Report--and on its Web site, saving the extra cost.

Tags: Right to Farm Sterling Massachusetts Town Meeting