Nahant Town Meeting vote helps out school

NAHANT – Nahant’s Johnson School will receive $7,000 in extra funding next fiscal year after a parent suggested the amendment at the town’s annual Town Meeting Saturday.While discussing the town’s budget, Advisory and Finance Committee Chair Joyce Maroney said Nahant is expecting about $37,000 in additional aid from the state for Fiscal Year 2013.She said the finance and school committees had agreed on allocating about half of that to the school.But Nahant resident Mark Alexakos said $18,000 isn’t enough, especially after the school’s art and entertainment department was cut last year when voters rejected a $260,000 override for school finances.”Clearly the town’s budget was balanced last year on the schools,” he said at the meeting. “You need to spread the pain around a little more.”Resident Linda McCarthy agreed.”Our school has no arts, no music, no computer, no library,” she said.As McCarthy and Alexakos spoke, Selectman Richard Lombard passed notes and whispered to his colleagues before taking his turn to speak.He abruptly announced he would agree to Alexakos’ amendment to allocate $25,000 of the state aid for the school.Soon after, voters passed the amendment and the town’s entire budget.School funding wasn’t the only amendment that created some back and forth discussion at the meeting.Planning Board member Dan Perepelitza proposed an amendment to the town’s floodplain laws that would require the Planning Board to issue permits to rebuild the Nahant Life Saving Station if it were ever badly damaged in a storm.He said the amendment would help ensure that protective dunes on the beach the historic building sits on wouldn’t be damaged during a rebuild.”This gives us a layer of transparency,” he said.But Town Counsel Charles Riley – along with Selectmen Chairperson Lainey Titus – said the amendment would actually create an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy by allowing anyone to appeal the Planning Board’s permits.”You could appeal this for two, three, four years and, by that time, the whole thing has gone astray,” Riley said of the rebuilding process.Bill Cullen, the commander of the town’s American Legion Post, which is located in the building, called the amendment “anti-historic.”Voters eventually voted down Perepelitza’s amendment.Voters also agreed to indefinitely postpone an amendment to the town’s charter that would have, among other things, made the town clerk position an appointed role.Town clerks must currently run for election every year.By voting to postpone the amendment, the town clerk position will continue to be an elected position.In more routine business, voters approved to appropriate $20,000 in treasury funds for Selectmen expenses, $10,000 for fire department wages and expenses and more than $129,000 for school expenses.Voters also approved spending $60,000 to go toward a new ladder truck for the fire department. The rest of the money for the $755,000 truck will come from a federal grant the town secured.And Town Moderator Dave Conlin announced that Maroney, who has served as the finance committee’s chair for the past three years, is Nahant’s 2012 citizen of the year.”She’s done a phenomenal job,” he said.Maroney said she was “thrilled” to receive the award.”It’s my pleasure ? to participate helping things work as smoothly as they do in Nahant,” she said.Amber Parcher can be reached at [email protected].