Error undoes fire department article
Published on November 12th, 2003
STONEHAM, MA - The fire department will continue to extinguish brush fires with their largest vehicles due to a "technical error" in a Town Meeting warrant article that proposed purchasing a flatbed truck for the purpose.
According to Town Clerk John Hanright, the day after Town Meeting, an employee noticed that an Article Six amendment proposed by Fire Chief Lawrence Lamey did not include a source of funding.
The written amendment reads, "that the town vote $60,000 for the purchase of a heavy pick-up truck with skid load," and fails to mention the word "borrow".
After Hanright consulted with Town Treasurer Tom Ciccatelli, the two town officials sought legal advice from a bond attorney who concluded that the funds for the fire department truck could not be borrowed.
"I got Tom to come over and he picked up [the error] right away and said, 'there's no way this will go through.' Nonetheless, we got the official word on it from a bond attorney," explained Hanright.
Although Article Six originally proposed borrowing $60,000 for the purchase of the truck, the Town's Board of Selectmen and Finance and Advisory Board agreed to reduce the amount to $30,000 a half-hour prior to the start of October's Town Meeting.
Town officials agreed to the reduced monetary amount after questions arose as to the fire department's need for the truck.
However, after Selectman Charlie Smith read the revised warrant article to the Town Meeting audience, Lamey argued that his department needed $60,000 so the truck could be outfitted with a skid load, or portable water tank.
Following that discussion, Lamey proposed two separate amendments. The first amendment, which was seconded by the Town Meeting audience, proposed that, "we refer back to the original warrant article of $60,000 for the purchase of a heavy-duty pickup truck with a skid-load."
After proposing that initial amendment, Lamey consulted with Finance and Advisory Board Chairman John Warren (according to Lamey and Hanright), and wrote a second amendment, which failed to identify a source of funding.
While Lamey did read that written amendment out loud to the Town Meeting audience, no person in the crowd seconded the motion.
Although the Stoneham Independent contacted Town Counsel William Solomon for an opinion as to which amendment takes precedence, Solomon declined to comment.
While Town Moderator Michael Rotondi was also unsure of which amendment officially counts for the record, he believes that the first amendment, if valid, would include a source of funding.
"If his amendment's intention was just to change the figure back to $60,000, I don't see why there would be an issue with that. The only place where this may have been mixed up is if in rewriting the entire motion, he forgot the word borrow and then the audience approved the motion...I'd have to make some calls and get back to you [as to which amendment officially counts]," said Rotondi.
"I think the intent was there, and I personally try to be more liberal with citizen's amendments. For somebody to be tripped up by semantics like that, it's lousy...But once it leaves the Town Meeting floor, it's pretty much out of the moderator's hands. All I can do is try to make sure that in the future, every opportunity is given to citizens to make sure everything's alright with amendments," Rotondi added.
According to Hanright, his official policy is to request that three copies of any amendment be submitted to him at Town Meeting. Saying that Lamey only provided one copy, the town clerk believes the error could have been spotted if proper procedure had been followed.
"That's why we require three copies. I'm not saying that it definitely would have been picked up, but there's a good chance one of us would have realized it and said, 'you need to change this,'" Hanright commented.
Taking full responsibility for the mix-up, Lamey emphasized his belief that the fire department will manage without the pick-up truck. However, he reiterated the arguments he made on the Town Meeting floor that responding to brush fires with larger vehicles will result in unnecessary wear-and-tear on the $300,000 vehicles.
"We needed this vehicle so we could have some flexibility when we respond to smaller incidents in the woods. It allows us to get further into the woods, especially down some of the narrower paths...It's unfortunate, but we'll deal with it. As far as our plan of action, we will continue to mitigate these incidents as we have over the past couple of years by using the larger apparatus," said Lamey.
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