Town Meeting Begins Monday, April 30 With Non-Financial Articles

Photo: The annual town meeting in Belmont.

Belmont’s 2018 Town Meeting gets underway at 7 p.m. on Monday, April 30 at Belmont High School’s auditorium.

For many of the Town Meeting Members in Belmont, the start of the annual get-together – which begins Monday, April 30 – is like Christmas and the 4th of July all rolled up in a patriotic family reunion with hidden fireworks just waiting to be lit. Others are not as thrilled, viewing the gathering as a three, four, five-hour debating society where they sit on uncomfortable theater seats while missing the playoffs broadcasts.

But on whatever side they fall, the nearly three hundred members of Belmont’s representative legislative body will gather in one of the purists and direct examples of democracy in the state and country. (Not so freewheeling as the open Town Meeting in which any voter can attend and resembles, at times, a rugby scrum.)

As of recent custom, Belmont has separated the non-financial (in May) and budgetary items (June) by roughly a month to accommodate the state’s budget calendar.

Monday night’s first night will include these articles in the following order: articles 1 to 7 and 10

Article 1: Order of the articles

Article 2: Authorization to represent the town’s legal interests

Article 3: Amend the general bylaws: Establish the Thaddeus Frost House Historic District

Article 4: Amend zoning bylaws: General Residence Zoning District, Sunset Clause

Article 5: Amend zoning bylaws: General Residence Zoning District

Article 6: Citizen’s Petition: Single-use plastic check-out bags [Withdrawn]

Article 7: Amends general bylaws: Plastic Bags

Article 10: The fiscal 2019 Community Preservation Committee budget and projects

$103,000 to the Belmont Veterans Memorial.
$5,000 for architectural drawings for the music bandstand at Payson Park.
$25,000 for design documents and bid specifications for the Town Field playground.
$780,087 for the construction of Grove Street Park Intergenerational Walking Path.
$250,000 to fund eligible commitments by the Belmont Housing Trust that would increase housing units where new housing is being built, provide incentives to developers to develop affordable housing units, or fund pre-development work to determine if sites are suitable for community housing development.
$175,000 to stabilize the McLean Barn.