Selectmen won’t support town vote on ‘same’ school project

By Alice Waugh

The Board of Selectmen will not support the idea of bringing the “same exact” project to another Town Meeting, even if that was the only way to retain the state funding.

“It would be disrespectful of the Town Meeting process,” Selectman Renel Fredriksen said at the board’s December 17 meeting.

“I think it was very clear,” said Selectman Noah Eckhouse, referring to the November 3 Town Meeting vote at which the $49 million project failed to garner a two-thirds majority. “It may have been a majority [in favor], but it was a down vote. We don’t want to run the same project up the flagpole.”

Eckhouse added that he “might” support having a vote on a project that was “meaningfully different,” even though he knew there was “never a question” that the town would drop out of the pipeline for a promised state grant of $21 million for the project.

“There are many, many reasons people voted against it,” Braun said. “To just revisit it would be counterproductive for town culture and goodwill.”

When you consider the votes that would be necessary, “the numbers are daunting,” Braun said. The Town Meeting tally was 370 in favor of the project and 321 against (54 percent to 45 percent). If the same number of “no” votes were cast in a second Town Meeting, “another 270 people would have to show up and all vote yes” to achieve a two-third majority, he said.

Put another way, if the same group of 691 voters came to a second Town Meeting, 93 of them would have to switch their votes from “no” to “yes” for the measure to pass.