The recent movement of the Marion Codification Committee from the purview of the Planning Board to that of the Select Board has reopened the question as to the mission of the subcommittee first approved at a 1955 Town Meeting.
During a special meeting of the Select Board on July 26, Town Administrator Geoff Gorman presented the Select Board a rough draft of the Codification Committee appointments and responsibilities per the intentions of the original vote.
As Gorman explained, the Codification Committee is comprised of five members, at least one of which is a woman. The committee will include a Select Board representative as one of the five. It will also have two “ex-officio” members, Building Commissioner Bob Grillo and Town Planner Doug Guey-Lee, who will lend their expertise but not vote. The voting quorum will be three members.
“Those things are in here, but everything else we can kind of tweak,” said Gorman.
“I’m quite honestly not a big fan of the Codification Committee. I think they went well above their set goals and tried to maybe change some bylaws, unknowingly, that probably should have gone before the voters,” said Select Board member Randy Parker, questioning the nuts and bolts of process.
“That’s what this whole document is for. It is the Select Board’s committee,” responded Gorman, explaining that should the Select Board decide at any point to do away with the Codification Committee, the process would be to put it on an article and bring it to Town Meeting. “One of the reasons why I was getting it into this special meeting and talking about it was to ensure that they were in place as we ramp up to the October Town Meeting in case something is presenting from the Planning Board or anyone else.”
Select Board member Norm Hills, who has been serving as the chairman of the Codification Committee in its recent iteration as a subcommittee to the Planning Board, said the bylaws go through Town Counsel.
Gorman said Planning Board Chairman Tucker Burr was aware of Gorman’s recommendations ahead of the Select Board meeting. He also noted (and Grillo confirmed) that the Planning Board agreed not to appoint its own subcommittee in the wake of the Codification Committee’s departure from Planning Board supervision.
“For example, the (recent) short-term rental (discussion), I would like to see more detail from the Planning Board about what they’re looking for Codification to do, and maybe … even to go as far as say I’d like to see just the structure of a bylaw, what you might be looking at, or bring us some bylaws from other towns. Go back to them, have them take a look at it,” suggested Grillo. “As Norm (Hills) will tell you, these things are a lot of work.
“Although it sounds like the Codification Committee could make a recommendation for a bylaw, if the Planning Board says, ‘no, we don’t support it,’ it can still go to Town Meeting. But we really don’t want to bring things to Town Meeting that the Planning Board hasn’t agreed to, even though we can. … I saw it happen in the past that we spent a lot of time on stuff that just got buried after we went through it. We don’t want to spin our wheels, we want to make sure that everybody’s on the same page.”
In acknowledging Hills’ and the Codification Committee’s efforts, Parker admitted it felt awkward to make critical comments about particular results of its members’ work.
“Maybe it’s time to look back at this 1955 vote and clean this thing up first, right? Fix the wording to it fits the Codification Committee and get that readopted,” suggested Parker. “In other words, ‘recommend changes in the town bylaws’ is what it says; it doesn’t say who they’re going to be brought to, who’s going to make the recommended changes or whether the recommended changes are going to be brought from another board to this internal Codification Committee to send to Town Counsel, reword, clean up, bring back the committee. That’s not such a bad idea because it takes a lot of pressure off the committee to keep moving the town forward …”
Gorman cautioned Parker against making a Town Meeting vote too detailed because any minor change would have to be brought back before voters.
Parker reiterated his opinion that the Codification Committee should be recharged with “better powers and a better direction.”
Gorman suggested one-year terms across the board (instead of three), giving the Select Board time to finalize the committee’s powers, mission and responsibility, but Parker and Burr were altogether hesitant to vote to empower a committee without a finalized mission statement.
Having poured hundreds of hours into the last several years of Codification Committee work, Hills remains the point person for establishing the committee’s revised charter, but Gorman took the blame for the delay and told the board he would work with Hills on creating a draft mission statement for the members’ review.
The Select Board discussed the timeline for Water and Sewer Regulations updates.
Select Board Chairman Toby Burr said updating the entire document would require six months and the costly hire of an engineer. He said one of his goals is to encourage commercial development in the Lockheed Martin area.
“I think some of the fees that are outlined here discourage commercial development, and so I’d like to change these sooner rather than later, as well as some of the fees regarding condos and … to me, it’s something I’d like to see it done and approved in our meeting in August,” said Burr, who does not think updating all the sewer regulations is doable in the short term.
Burr cited Page 75, Article 12, Sections 2 and 3, on recommended fees as problematic. Parker said the fees give the Select Board leverage. Hills said it gives the board something to bargain with.
Edward Johnson was voted approval for full-time patrol-officer appointment for a one-year probationary period per Chief of Police Richard Nighelli’s recommendation. Johnson graduated from the MPTC academy in March and works as a dispatcher in Wareham and has served Marion as a special officer since 2005.
In introducing Johnson to the board, Nighelli referenced a citation that Johnson received from the governor for his work with a child who called 911 when his mother was dealing with a medical emergency.
“Over the years, he’s been a member of this department, he’s done a great job. You’re looking at one of the better dispatchers in the state,” said Nighelli, noting that Wareham’s police chief said, when things are at their worst, Johnson is at his best.
The next meeting of the Marion Select Board was not announced upon adjournment.
Marion Select Board
By Mick Colageo