The town meetings and election scheduled for the end of this month have been called off, with tentative new dates in late April, though town officials have the option of postponing again if the Covid-19 epidemic has not abated.
“The sentiment is very clear — everyone thinks we should postpone,” said Town Moderator Sarah Cannon Holden at an emergency meeting of the Board of Selectmen on Friday morning.
“We are very strongly against pulling people together at any public gathering at this point in time,” said Patricia Miller, a member of the Board of Health, which met on March 11.
Holden officially declared that the Town Meeting and Special Town Meeting will be postponed “to a time certain” — Saturday, April 25 a 9:30 a.m. in the Donaldson Auditorium. The actions came just hours before Gov. Baker issued an order banning public gatherings with more than 250 people, with some exceptions.
The most time-sensitive issue that was due for a vote on March 28 was the Special Town Meeting question about the school project. Last month, the School Building was forced to cut items totaling $3.5 million after construction bids came in higher than expected, so they’re hoping residents approve adding back up to $2 million for the items they consider most important.
Architects and construction firms need to know by June 1 which items will be part of the project, and they would prefer that the town vote by mid-May. However, the project as a whole is not stalled. “The contracts are signed, the project is moving forward,” Selectman Jennifer Glass said. “The pieces in question are the items we’re thinking about adding back.”
Virtual meetings
In the coming weeks, town officials will be thinking about ways to make both the town meetings and town government function given the necessity of social distancing. Meetings of boards and commissions and their accompanying public hearings will be postponed when possible or held remotely. The state’s open Meeting Law requires members of town boards to meet in person in public, but an executive order issued by Gov. Baker on Thursday night relaxes that requirement, allowing meetings to be held remotely, without a quorum gathered at a single location, as long as the public has access in real time to the proceedings via the web or some other audio or videoconferencing method.
“We need to move on that now,” Miller said about the issue of getting access to the appropriate technology for board chairs. These methods could also be used to shorten the town meetings when they do take place, such as having televised presentations of the warrant articles.
Unlike elections, residents may not vote early or by absentee ballot at Town Meeting. However, officials could survey residents ahead of time to shape a shortened agenda with just the most popular or important items. Votes on other matters such as the citizens’ petitions could be postponed until later in the year or even 2021.
If necessary, the April 25 Town Meetings could be opened and the immediately postponed to another “time certain.”
Town election
Under state law, the only way to postpone town elections is via court injunction or special legislation by the state. Voters as well as poll workers at elections tend to skew toward the senior citizen population, who are more vulnerable to serious illness from Covid-19, and the idea of them interacting with hundreds of people on Election Day is “disconcerting,” Town Administrator Tim Higgins said.
The board voted to ask the governor to file emergency legislation on behalf of the town seeking authorization to postpone the election to a date on or before June 30. However, if the election is to be held the customary two days after Town Meeting (which is now scheduled for April 27), officials must nail down the election date by April 5 because 20 days’ notice is required. That period is to allow people who were not eligible to vote in March to register.
The rescheduled election will probably also allow “modified early voting by mail,” which is essentially the same as absentee ballot voting, but without the requirement for the voter to sign an affidavit saying they are unable to vote in person for religious or medical reasons or because they are out of town. Voters would still have to request ballots in advance.
Lincoln’s town election is normally held on the same day as Sudbury’s so the two towns can simultaneously elect members of the Lincoln-Sudbury Regional School Committee. However, that isn’t critical this year, since the seats for that board are uncontested.
Like everything else nowadays, these tentative plans are subject to change, depending on what happens with the pandemic and whether the state offers more rules or guidance on how town government should be conducted in the Covid-19 era.
Lincoln public health nurse Trish McGean, who was also at the selectmen’s meeting, said that as of Friday morning she did not know if and when the town’s preschools and private schools would close, though she assumed they would follow the lead of the Lincoln Public Schools.
There were no official cases as of Covid-19 on Friday, though experts agree that the virus is circulating widely. When someone does test positive or presumptively positive, the state Department of Public Health will inform McGean, who will publish that fact (minus patient-identifying information) on the town’s Covid-19 website at lincolnpublichealthnews.com.