Town Meeting expected to correct 2007 error

SAUGUS-Town Meeting members will be faced with a warrant for tonight’s special Town Meeting that is four articles longer than the warrant for the annual meeting last spring.Town Moderator Robert Long said members have a lot of work ahead of them and not all of it would get done tonight.The warrant is packed with articles aimed at addressing water and sewer issues, a street acceptance plan, the Kasabuski deficit, the vocational school and a dozen special interest groups asking for financing.Long said he expects meeting members to dispatch the seven articles pertaining to water and sewer, including one that changes the method of calculating water charges for multiple housing units.The calculation has been a contentious one with the Finance Committee debating its merits for two consecutive weeks, though they did recommend it in the end.The intention of the article is to essentially right a wrong.In 2007 Town Meeting voted to lower the minimum rate payment to give low-end water users a break. In doing so it created two new tiers and bumped up the cost for higher end users. The problem is a number of places in town, such as the Route 1 north Mobile Home Park, which uses only one meter for all units, which then made them some of the highest users in town. The result was water bills that in some cases jumped up 150 percent.Long said he believes the current fix will only be temporary and a committee will have to re-examine the rate structure yet again for the annual spring meeting.It is not clear whether meeting members will address the Kasabuski deficit. Article 4 seeks to reduce the Group Health Insurance line item by $800,000, which would then be used to pay off the ice arena’s deficit but the article doesn’t spell out exactly how that will happen.Long said the Finance Committee indefinitely postponed the article to the next special Town Meeting so Town Manager Andrew Bisignani could rewrite it making it clearer.Long, however, said he wouldn’t rule out meeting members taking it up anyway.”Someone could move action as it’s written,” he said. “You never know what will happen.”Meeting members are expected to skip 15 articles dealing with a street acceptance plan pending a letter from the Planning Board Chairman Mary Carfagna.The streets are currently paper streets, which means they are not recognized by the town. It also means the town receives no state funding, or Chapter 90 money, for those particular streets.Long said he asked Carfagna for a letter he could give to meeting members denoting the work done toward getting the streets accepted and that they are in good order.Town Meeting members will also tackle articles aimed at keeping the Senior Center and Youth and Recreation open and paying off the vocational school tuition.Since the Finance Committee has not finished its recommendations on the special interest articles those will not be taken up, but Long said they will have plenty of time to debate the issues. With the election a week away and Veterans Day the following week Long said Town Meeting won’t likely convene again until Nov. 17 or 24.