(Editor’s note: This article was updated on April 18 to correct the first paragraph about public comment at meetings.)
In the aftermath of the last-minute Housing Choice Act amendment and pre-Town Meeting debate over who was allowed to say what and when, the Planning Board this week started formulating policies to spell out public participation at its meetings as well as its own operations.
The discussion covered several topics including virtual meetings, public comment, agendas, how to treat split decisions by the board, and its procedures for presenting at Town Meeting. The board didn’t allow public comment at its in-person April 16 meeting where the draft policies were discussed, but it will take comment before it votes on them at a future meeting.
Public comment at meetings
For nonjudiciary issues — those having to do with general policy or zoning — members proposed following the Select Board’s policy of allowing a 15-minute public comment period at each meeting, with each speaker limited to two minutes. For issues regarding individual projects (site plan review, driveway curb cuts, etc.), the board will continue our current policy of allowing unlimited speaking time and prioritizing abutters.
Board chair Margaret Olson encouraged residents to send emails about issues of interest prior to the Thursday before each meeting so the issue can be put on the agenda if appropriate, and board members would then get copies of the emails as part of their pre-meeting packets. “You can write as much as you want in an email,” she said. “It’ll save you some aggravation from sitting and listening to us nattering on.”
Meeting agendas
In the flurry of discussions before the Annual Town Meeting on March 23, the board became aware that an amendment to the HCA bylaw (which eventually passed by a 52% to 48% margin) was probably going to be proposed. Director of Planning and Land Use Paul Vaughn-Mackenzie told the Housing Choice Act Working Group about this on the morning of March 14, and HCAWG members initially thought the Planning Board would discuss it at the meeting scheduled for March 19, but they did not.
“I wanted to talk about that amendment and was told we could not” because the public hearing had already taken place, Olson said this week. Board members wondered whether the previously posted agenda for the March 19 meeting could have been amended, and if so, how and when.
“If something like that comes up, we’ll need to call [Town Counsel] Joel [Bard],” Olson said. She added that he had also told her that having a standard agenda item such as “Other business” was not allowed under the state’s Open Meeting Law.
Split decisions
Another bone of contention was the Planning Board’s split decision in February on endorsing the HCA bylaw. At Town Meeting, Olson read aloud the dissenting letter written by board members Ephraim Flint and Lynn DeLisi, but neither of them was allowed to speak from the podium.
“I felt pretty much silenced in terms of my ability to express my thoughts on the floor of Town Meeting. I felt that I should have had the opportunity to explain what I did and why I did it,” Flint said this week. “I don’t believe having you read the letter was sufficient.”
When the Planning Board gives its report on an issue like the HCA at Town Meeting, “it’s a statement about our reasoning at the time we took the vote, which is why I read the letter,” Olson said.
Boards and committees are almost always unanimous in recommending approval of warrant articles they’re presenting, but it was unclear before and during Town Meeting how the board should represent both sides of the issue, “and I don’t pretend to know the answer to that,” Olson said. “It was very, very difficult… some people were telling me I should do this and others telling me it’s not your jurisdiction.” She and board member Gary Taylor noted that the School Committee, for example, has a policy that the majority decision becomes the stated position of the committee as a whole.
Town Moderator Sarah Canon Holden and Select Board member Jim Hutchinson will head at least one public forum to gather input on how Town Meeting procedures can be improved. Consequently, the Planning Board deferred further discussion of its own Town Meeting policies until after that happens.
A related issue: when to allow speakers to present slides and speak from the podium as well as from the floor. “What about the RLF?” DeLisi asked, referring to the fact that the Rural Land Foundation was given these privileges when proposing its HCA amendment.
“I don’t even know what category that’s in, which is why we need to go through the town process,” Olson replied. “The town needs to figure out how it’s handling Town Meeting and then we can figure out how we fit into that.”
LincolnTalk
LincolnTalk, the email listserv for residents, exploded with comments, protests and questions about the HCA in the weeks before Town Meeting, and Olson tried to answer some of those questions in the same venue. But Vaughn-MacKenzie said this week that this is prohibited by the Open Meeting Law and that she and other town officials are no longer allowed to be subscribed members of LincolnTalk. She encouraged board members to use their official town email addresses when discussing town business or else copy all town-related correspondence from their personal to their town email accounts. Craig Nicholson and Olson are the only Planning Board members who have activated their town email accounts, she added.