Rochester’s Special Town Meeting Monday approved most of its warrant proposals, with notable exceptions and strong resistance to even some of the articles that did pass.
In a meeting highlighted by the new feature of a large screen hanging from the stage to visually present the articles, the crowded 250-person quorum began by easily approving transfers from available funds for a variety of needs around town. Voters endorsed $120,000 for new, safer sliding cell room doors, $3,225 for the town’s share of the Plumb Library’s plan to purchase a new more water-resistant and air-tight library book depository with an hydraulic-lift floor, $26,500 to fund costs related to post-closure landfill engineering, monitoring and surveying work, $175,000 to renovate the station’s second floor to create additional office, meeting and storage space, and $30,000 to install new commercial grade kitchen flooring and replace the deteriorating in-floor grease trap at the senior center.
Voters then approved spending $100,000 of Capital Improvement Committee funds to replace the 1999 Highway Department sander truck with a used model that Highway Surveyor Jeff Eldridge said he will outfit himself to make it more usable.
However, a request for $55,000 from available funds for site work at the former Rochester Country Fair grounds on Pine St. where the new fire station will be built, sparked opposition before being ultimately approved.
Resident Timothy Fields led that push back by suggesting $55,000 of site work there will lead to a $30 million building according to a prior consultant’s feasibility study. Resident Jeffrey Costa added the town does not need a $30 million public works project that would raise property owners’ taxes.
Several town firefighters reacted strongly, noting that a new station safer for firefighters to occupy and closer to medical and fire emergencies that can house important equipment now left outdoors is what the town needs. “When seconds matter, we would be wasting valuable time getting to your emergency,” one town firefighter said. “We’re talking a safer building for us and for you.”
Town Administrator Cameron Durant responded that this is a ‘not-to-exceed’ amount that will allow the town to design the right facility for the town. The measure passed by a strong majority voice vote.
The meeting approved a move to change the Town Clerk from an elected to an appointed position, which would send the measure to an election ballot question in the spring, after push back from residents noting the town has voted down this proposal before. Durant argued the job of town clerk has gotten more complicated of late and it takes a full two-year term for a new town clerk to do his or her job. Electing a town clerk for a simple two-year term is not enough for such a professional position so important to running the town.
Voters then soundly approved allowing the treasurer to invest town trust funds such as for scholarships and the library in ‘prudent’ investments and a major revision of the town’s Personnel Bylaw that clarifies the bylaw’s scope, evaluation and grievance process, Family Medical Leave Act compliance, and adds a sick leave bank and a family leave policy.
Voters exempted town municipal buildings from a new state law requiring that no firearm, even a legally licensed one, may be brought legally into such facilities.
Turning to zoning bylaws, meeting members approved an amendment to the town’s Battery Energy Storage Systems regulations to ban them from being built in the town’s Groundwater Protection District and the Mattapoisett River Valley Watershed. They added to the bylaw governing Visual Screening of Solar Arrays in residential districts that said screening needs to be 100 percent, and they deleted ‘Use Variances’ from what is allowed under zoning bylaws.
The meeting, however, voted down proposals to add the regulation of short-term rentals and accessory dwelling units (ADUs). Proponent Richard Cutler, whose Zoning Bylaw Review Committee created both, argued these would impose some regulation of these residential uses. Residents argued back that the short-term rental amendment tries to solve a problem that does not exist. Planning Board chair Arnold Johnson said his panel has voted not to recommend the ADU bylaw because the new state law it is reacting to keeps changing. That state law allows ADUs by right on residential properties. The state, he said, keeps changing its regulations whenever it hears how MA towns and cities are writing its own rules in response to it. “The state keeps moving the goal posts,” Johnson said. “It’s a moving target.” He said once the state regulations are in place in early February, then the town can tweak its own bylaw.
The town meeting adjourned after a record three hours in session.
Rochester Special Town Meeting
By Michael J. DeCicco