2/28/2005 Work session notes
This was looking to be a fairly quiet meeting. Not much new to discuss, just the tabled items from last month (Campaign Finance, Riverdale Community Building use, Sister City adoption) approval of enough minutes to choke a small horse. Oh, and one other minor item, on the second page of the agenda.

Then CM Badders mentioned the town taking down a few trees on Riverside Drive to allow a homeowner to put in a driveway. A second driveway. At the back of his property. For his mobile home.

Alert resident David Lingua asked about the town taking on an expense like this (unofficial estimates from various people who were there, perhaps all wrong, ranged from around $1000 to several thousand). Mayor Tiberio "clarified" that who would pay for what had not been determined.

CM Kiernan noted that the town had often asked homeowners to pay for moving a curb cut (what the rest of us know as a "driveway entrance"), much less adding one. CM Badders didn't seem to think there was a problem, and said he would approach every case that came before him as a separate case; no precedent was being set here. It'll be on the agenda next week.

A few more minor items were added. One was allowing the Judges of Election to accept ballots where the voter had put a check mark in the box instead of an "X" (CM Hiles added that he would like to change the inner envelope used for absentee ballots so you didn't need a completely legible signature for your absentee ballot to be counted, one of the many recommendations of the Elections Appeals Board in 2003. Thank you David!). One was deciding whether to sign up for the county's (state's?) mosquito control program.


Oh, then there was the item on the second page. The item proposing amendment of the Town Charter to raise the tax cap. Or just get rid of it.


This might be an OK thing to do, but why wait until the very last minute to introduce it? It needs to be introduced next week (March 7), and approved at the April 4 meeting to go into effect for this years budget. That leaves around two weeks breathing room (only useful if the council approves it at a special legislative meeting, much more out of the public eye). This could have been discussed for several months before it needed to be introduced, instead we have one week.

Sigh.
- posted by Alan K. Thompson @ 10:28 PM