Saugus citizen’s forum fight continues on

SAUGUS – When Town Moderator Robert Long told Town Meeting members Monday that the Selectmen were going to clean up their own article not everyone was happy.Meeting members were going to take up article 28, which asked them to reinstate Citizen’s Forum into the Board of Selectmen meetings and keep it there with a bylaw.The forum was dropped in name last November when a 3-2 vote required that residents who want to speak before the board must first be placed on the agenda under correspondence. The open citizen’s forum that came at the end of meetings would no longer be part of the program.Long told meeting members that the selectmen planned to address the issue and he would put the article on hold until after the board’s next regularly scheduled meeting on Tuesday, May 13.Town Meeting member Sean Maltais surprised his colleagues and selectmen, however, when he stood at the end of Monday’s meeting and said he’d like to take up the article anyway.Long said it didn’t totally shock him only because meeting member Al DiNardo had already passed him a note telling him he also would like to take up the article.Long laughed when asked if he simply ignored DiNardo’s request.”I can’t make motions and nobody raised the issue,” he said. “Someone else had to make the motion to take it out of order, which Sean did and it is his right to do so.”A motion to table quickly closed the issue but not everyone was happy.Town Meeting member Ray Lawrence said he would like to have seen the article taken up.Like Maltais, Lawrence argued that the selectmen had six months to make the situation right and it failed to do so.The forum came up for a vote at least three times since last fall. Each vote ended with Chairman Donald Wong along with Stephen Castinetti and Peter Rossetti in favor of changing the forum set up and Michael Kelleher and Stephen Horlick against it.Lawrence said allowing Town Meeting to address the issue would give it extra teeth.”If we do it the way we want, with a bylaw, it can’t be changed again,” he said. “They can’t decide to bring it back, wait six months and then dump it again. If we did it our way, it would be a permanent law.”Selectman Peter Rossetti said he believed that the right place to deal with the issue was in the board’s backyard, not Town Meetings.Lawrence said if that is the case then why did one of their own, Kelleher, put the issue on Town Meeting’s agenda.Long said he preferred the selectmen take care of it.”Usually one branch tends to stay out of the business of another branch,” he said. “Besides, it’s kind of time for us to all work together on something and maybe move beyond this.”