Saugus Town Meeting members stare down five tough articles

SAUGUS-Town Meeting members knocked out five articles on its 10-article warrant during Monday’s special Town Meeting, but that’s only half the battle – and it was the easy half.Meeting members listened to reports of committees, voted to allow voter registration in the high school and agreed to pay the premiums for retired teachers’ health insurance. They also agreed to set policy for naming public buildings and passed an inclusionary zoning bylaw.They did not, however, take up the bulk of the financial articles since the Finance Committee has yet to make a recommendation on them.Town Clerk Joanne Rappa asked meeting members to approve an article that would allow registrar workers to go directly into the high school and vocational school to register eligible students to vote.”It will help with the town census,” she said, adding that she also hoped it would get kids interested in politics.Town Meeting member Robert Hoffman asked that a committee be formed to determine criteria for naming public buildings because otherwise he feared the town would become a hodge-podge of randomly named facilities.”We need criteria,” he said. “We need to figure out how and why we should name town-owned buildings.”His article comes after Town Meeting voted to name two buildings in memory of two different deceased town officials in the last two years. Hoffman said prior to voting to name the Youth and Recreation building after former selectman Christie Ciampa and the Public Safety building after former Town Manager Ed Collins, the Belmonte Middle School was the last building named for a public official.He also said some Town Meeting members may have felt pressured into voting to re-name the Youth and Recreation or Public Safety buildings since family members were on hand during the debate.”Who would vote no with family sitting right there,” he said.Before wrapping up the night, meeting members also voted unanimously to accept an inclusionary zoning bylaw that developers will want to take note of.Town Meeting member Janet Leuci, who headed a committee charged with developing an affordable housing plan, presented the new bylaw. The bylaw stipulates that any developer building five or more units must earmark 10 percent for affordable housing.Leuci said in looking at the town’s building history it was clear to see that permits for five or more units in multi-family structures were having the greatest impact on the town.According to her research, in 2002 only 16 permits for a five or more unit building were pulled but that number jumped to 131 in 2003, soared again to 168 in 2005 and dropped to 134 in 2006.”This permit was adding the most to the town,” she said. “Without this bylaw it would be impossible to ever reach the state-required 10 percent affordable housing.”The Finance Committee is scheduled to meet tonight at 7:30 p.m. where it should take up the pending financial articles. The special Town Meeting was adjourned to the call of the moderator, which should reconvene the meeting within the next two weeks.