NAHANT — Officials may further postpone the date of Nahant’s annual Town Meeting to sometime this fall.
Town manager Antonio Barletta said the reason for delaying the meeting, currently scheduled for June 27, is primarily a matter of resident safety.
“Number one is public health,” he said. “We anticipate a large number of people will attend Town Meeting. In the past we’ve had around 400 people or more, and we don’t believe we would have the ability to have that many people in a confined space while adhering to proper social distancing protocols.”
He added that with state social distancing guidelines changing rapidly week by week, there’s no guarantee that a gathering the size of Nahant’s Town Meeting will be allowed by the end of next month.
“As of right now, we have no indication from the state as to when a gathering of that size will even be permitted,” Barletta said.
Town Meeting is one of Nahant’s biggest political days of the year, with officials and residents using the time to discuss and vote on critical local issues, including the town budget, which Barletta said a delay would give town officials more time to develop.
“We don’t have updated numbers from the state as to what our state aid will look like,” Barletta said. “As far as local revenues go, we’re also unsure how they’ll be impacted by the coronavirus. (Because) we don’t know how much revenue we’re going to be receiving yet from the state or locally, it makes sense to wait until the fall, which is when we’ll have the most amount of information, and hopefully more people can attend.”
