Selectmen endorse trash-fee question
Published on January 18th, 2006
STONEHAM, MA - The town's Selectmen endorsed a non-binding referendum question Tuesday night that will allow Stoneham's citizens to weigh in on the appropriateness of the rubbish fee.
Vowing to follow through with his commitment to place the matter before voters at this April's general election, Selectman Cosmo Ciccarello felt it was only fair to listen to how residents felt about the town-imposed charge - which cost single-family homeowners $150 last year.
According to Ciccarello, his decision was not only guided by an informal promise made to Stoneham Taxpayers Association (STA) members at an mid-September Selectmen's meeting, but also by a surge of regret over instituting the fee shortly after it was implemented last Spring.
"We had made a commitment, and to be honest with you, I had forgotten completely about it," said Ciccarello, referring to the three other Selectmen who nodded in approval last September to the ballot question request.
"This is non-binding. We still have the sole authority to decide on a trash fee, or put a debt exclusion or an override on the ballot," the seven-term Selectman explained.
Opposed to the initiative, Selectman Tony Kennedy, the lone dissenter in the favorable 4-1 vote, reiterated his belief that the ballot question set a bad precedent, regardless of whether the referendum was non-binding or not.
Specifically, the board's Vice-Chairman argued that the state legislature intentionally enabled the Selectman to authorize such fees and that putting the question on the ballot would lead to a slippery slope where citizens regularly challenged an executive decision they disagreed with.
"If the people on the legislature intended that something like this be put on the ballot, they would have voted like that. Of course you have the right to vote, but in this case, Mass General Law states that the Selectmen have the sole power to allow this," Kennedy asserted.
The Vice-Chairman furthered his stance by referring to a public hearing - convened to weigh citizen concerns about the garbage charges - which was held last winter prior to the trash fee being implemented by the unanimous consent of his counterparts.
Recalling that various members, including Ciccarello and Selectmen Chair Bob Sweeney, had espoused their opposition to the trash fee prior to that hearing, Kennedy claimed that a fair crosscut of opinions must have swayed their opinion on the fee.
"The point is we held a public hearing and people spoke both for it and against it. And clearly, those who spoke for it must have been more convincing," Kennedy said.
Scoffing at the suggestion that the winter meeting was representative of the entire electorate's opinion on the trash fee, STA member Peter D'Angelo argued that a public forum attended by only 200 of the town's 16,000 registered voters could hardly present such an opportunity.
In addition, both Ciccarello and the STA member harkened back to the Annual Town Meeting two-years-ago, in which 600 residents approved an operating budget that included funding from a $2.9 million override.
"What I don't understand is the reluctance to hear from the people. If it's 80 to 20 against the trash fee, and you think you need it, then you can vote for it. If you respect the vote of the people, then you can vote against it," D'Angelo retorted.
"600 people voted for the override. And then we put it on the ballot and it was defeated by a 2-1 margin," Ciccarello furthered, adding that even though he was against the override, he voted to place it on the ballot because he felt the decision should be left up to the town's residents.
Lobbying against the question on different grounds, Finance Board Vice-Chairman John Warren warned that the ballot question would jeopardize the entire budget process, as no real decisions would be made until April 4.
Reminding the Selectmen that a balanced budget was due to the Finance Board by March 1 of this year according to town regulations - which were created to ensure adequate time for the advisory board to provide guidance to citizens for Town Meeting - Warren doubted that such a deadline would be met.
"I want to have some discussion on how this affects the budget process. Without a budget, we would really have nothing to go on," the Finance Board Chairman argued. "So I think it would be appropriate for the Selectmen to have some discussions with the Finance Board to decide why this is necessary."
"We're going to give you a balanced budget as soon as [Town Administrator Ron] Florino gives us one on Jan. 31," Ciccarello answered.
However, according to Kennedy, the budget that Florino was preparing would not include a trash fee.
Adding that no official decision had been made on the future of the citizen-garbage charge, Kennedy reminded the board that Florino was mandated to create such a spending proposal, "just to see what the numbers would look like".
The Selectman also reasoned that the April ballot question would not only put town officials in an awkward position where they had to axe municipal positions within a limited window of time, but it would also lead to citizens coming to Town Meeting without a proper understanding of what the budget reflected.
"I don't think it's appropriate to have a question on April 1 and then have to scramble to put a budget together. We'll only have three-weeks to decide what police officers we're going to lay-off," Kennedy insisted.
Again throwing back the events surrounding the failed override initiative two-years-ago in response, Ciccarello claimed that Kennedy had no problem with residents coming to Town Meeting that year before the matter was eventually decided in June.
And if residents could go to Town Meeting having to understand two hypothetical budgets - one with an override and one without - and then go to the ballot in June at a $10,000 expense to the town, surely they could find a way to analyze the budget after this April ballot question was decided, Ciccarello shot back.
"If you remember, for the override, we voted in June. We went to Town Meeting with two budgets. So I think April is more than sufficient time."
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